A Yelp executive from San Francisco and a Yelp representative from Manhattan came to Brooklyn the other day to have coffee with me and Hepcat. They were in from San Francisco to do research and to attend the montly New York shindig for elite Yelpers.

Does anyone know what I’m talking about?

Yelp is an online community — a really interesting and growing one that was started by two former Pay Pal execs in San Francisco.

You may have happened upon a Yelp when you were googling a restaurant or store. Yelp users post recommendations and reviews on everything from restaurants to dentists. Information Week Magazine thinks they could be the next You Tube.

Think you can pick the next big thing on the Internet? Online traffic
analysis site Hitwise thinks so and it has just predicted which
up-and-coming Web 2.0 companies you’ll be using next.

Based on an extensive filter of 25 million Internet users and some
860,000 Web sites, Bill Tancer, the general manager of Hitwise, said Yelp, StumbleUpon, Veoh, WeeWorld, Imeem, and Piczo have the potential to be the next YouTube, Wikipedia, or Flickr.

"These sites are ones that attract a certain kind of user and have the
best chance of crossing the chasm between early adopters and the
mainstream media," Tancer said during a keynote presentation at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco this week.

Tancer said the six companies are ones that have yet to "pop" or break
out into the Web’s popular consciousness — similar to sites like
MySpace, Twitter, and Digg, which were relatively unknown a few years
ago and now have massive amounts of users.

We had coffee at Naidres in Carroll Gardens. Stepanie and Sam were already on that side of town so we decided to leave the Slope. We had a really interesting and far reaching conversation about  blogging in Brooklyn. A good information exchange. Stephanie had never been to Brooklyn but she loved it. As everyone knows, it is the bloggiest neighborhood in the US and I’m sure Yelp is interested in making in-roads here.

There seems to be a code of conduct at Yelp that makes for a mostly good-natured reviewing system. It’s more about which places you recommend rather than which places you want to flame. And it’s not a personal ‘here’s my love life’ kind of site either. It’s really about lifestyle and what you do with your time, where you like to eat, drink, socialize, and shop.

Obviously it’s for a young urban crowd — those who have time to go out and about.

Stephanie seemed quite in-the-know about OTBKB, which she found on outside.in. We both agreed that for a blog to form a community of interested readers, the writing style is very important as it must communicate the sensibility of a real personality with likes, dislikes, and a palpable POV.