Former Citysearch Exec. Launches ‘YellowBot’

By Greg Sterling

The image “http://st.ypbot.net/prod/images/beta_215x59.v2148.gif” cannot be displayed, because it contains errors.Erron Silverstein, who knows local well and ran business development at Citysearch, has launched a “Web 2.0″ IYP site: YellowBot. The data are from Localeze. Here’s a sample results page for “Appliances, West Hollywood” (CA).

The primary differentiator is the interface at this point. But Silverstein, like others in local, is hoping to have users enhance the data. He, in fact, describes the site as an online community in this interview:

YellowBot is an online community designed to help people organize their lives in the real world using the tools of the internet.

4 Responses to “Former Citysearch Exec. Launches ‘YellowBot’”

  1. AhmedF Says:

    Frontpage is sorta borked in FF.

  2. Ask Bjørn Hansen Says:

    Hi Ahmed,

    Uh-oh! That’s not good. :-) Can you email a screenshot to me (ask@develooper.com)?

    Most of us working on ypbot actually use Firefox (well, except for me – I use Safari/WebKit), but (mostly) on Macs.

    – ask

  3. tomvonl Says:

    Yellowbot is a scam. It lists people’s personal information as “businesses”. They just scrape other site’s listings or have purchased spam lists or mailing lists. Nothing but a lame attempt to rip people off. They also don’t respond to any requests to have personal information removed from the site. Avoid this website.

  4. tomvonl Says:

    A followup on my earlier comment. The people at Yellowbot did eventually contact me and have my personal information removed from their site, as well apparently from the business listing they use to populate the site. Although it was a frustrating few days wait, they we’re apologetic and accommodating in the end and it seems may make an effort to improve communications with users in the future about any errant listings.

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