The Hipster Detector Has Arrived. It’s Called Yelp Wordmap

By on July 2, 2013

Hipsters on Yelp

Can’t stand scarf-in-July wearing, trust fund dependent, ironic beard sporting hipsters? If you live in a major city, Yelp is coming to the rescue with enough heatmaps to make the Predator squeal in glee. Launching a new feature called Yelp Wordmap, you can look for trends in Yelp reviews overlayed on a city map.

hipster-mainstreamThese trends are organized by keyword, hence “hipster” will provide all the hot spots where hipsters gather to talk about indie bands that don’t exist and trade V-neck shirts for mason jars filled with PBR. Of course, if you are looking for a new flock of hipsters to join before migrating into any nearby forest, Yelp Wordmap will help you find them.

However, Yelp Wordmap isn’t only about tracking down rogue hipster sects. You can also avoid places in the city that attract annoying tourists, overbearing yuppies and douchey frat boys. Other keywords along the left rail of the interface include bacon, cheap, cocktails, patio, PBR, pricey, romantic, noodles and view.

In addition, cities have keywords specific to the area. For instance, Los Angeles has a heatmap for valet, Seattle has a heatmap for espresso, Philadelphia has a heatmap for hoagie, Austin has a heatmap for margaritas and so on. Other cities included in Yelp’s experiment include Boston, Chicago, London, New York, Paris, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Toronto and Washington D.C.

If you live in one of these cities, check out the new feature here and let us know how effective it is.

About Mike Flacy

Editor-in-Chief for The CheckOut. During my free time, I love to write about pop culture, home theater, digital photography, social media, mobile technology and cool gadgets!

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