My Favorite Collection

I have a lot of love for Instagram, as do my cats as many of you know...but I have not shared yet in this space about my love for another platform out there - Yelp!  I know it hasn't been mentioned yet in the class or featured in our readings as one of the six major social networking sites, but it's possibly my most active networked knowledge sharing activity.  

As an Elite Yelper (3 years proud), I've written over 122 reviews and posted 200+ photos.  In the last 90 days alone, my photos received 23,139 views and and reviews were seen 1,436 times.  Yelp has a filter where you can see your "impact" which is pretty neat.  Yelp users can bookmark, save, collect, check-in, add tips, follow, and friend others.  You can also each achievements and badges -- I only have 2 Firsts badges but I'm very proud of them 😂.  It's hard to be the First to review a restaurant or business!  

Anyway, one of my favorite features of Yelp is the ability to curate.  I have about 16 collections ranging from "Best Las Vegas Eats" to "Sedona Must Sees".  The collections can be public or private, which most of mine are private because I like to use them for my own trip planning purposes.  Another great feature is the ability to follow collections that have been curated by others.  For example, there is a Tallahassee's Elite Picks collection where you can see what other Yelp Eliters are getting excited about in Tallahassee.  People are very excited about Culver's coming to Tally!  You can change the featured collections (curated by others) with a location filter which makes traveling more fun.  Our recent trip to Savannah was a blast due in part to my Savannah Yelp Collection.  It's so fun to explore the restaurants and hidden gems in a town, selectively add them to my collection board, and then go to them!  Am I the only one who gets this excited about that?!  I literally build in a few hours post vacation to go back into my collections and add my reviews/photos.  It's kind of tiring (lol) but when I see the impact of my posts it makes it all worth it.  A friend posted to FB yesterday that her family was traveling to Las Vegas and looking for restaurant recommendations for Father's Day.  I hoped onto my Vegas Collection and sent over a few recommendations within seconds (my rec was Lotus of Siam if you are curious).  From the results shared in the Using the Networked Knowledge Activities Framework to Examine Learning on Social Networking Sites, it is clear that some sites are harder to "see" collections.  This is not the case for Yelp!!  

If you also Yelp...my profile name is Emily K. and here's a look at some of my collections!