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Nasir and Matt again talk about Yelp, this time with its new chat feature. They then answer the question, "What's the most important thing to include in a noncompete agreement?" Nasir's note: here is the link to the site he deemed much better than Yelp:http://talkto.com/. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: Welcome to Legally Sound Smart Business! This is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And this is Matt Staub. NASIR: And welcome to our business podcast where we cover business news and also add our legal twist to the business news and also answer some of your business legal questions that you, the listener who are businesses that can send at ask@legallysoundsmartbusiness.com. MATT: You said the word “business” quite often in that intro. NASIR: I just want to emphasize that we’re focusing on businesses. MATT: This has been the week of intros where I’ve critiqued. I’ve never listened prior to this week. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: I’m finally listening so every episode’s been a critique of your intro. I think, eventually, we’ll get a pretty good one. NASIR: Usually, it’s me just saying how perfect the intro is and then we just get started. This time, it’s like you saying the opposite which hurts my feelings. MATT: Yeah. So, speaking of critiques we have, we need to keep track of how many times we talk about these different companies because we’re going to talk about Yelp again. NASIR: Our nemesis. MATT: I don’t know how I feel about this. I think, as a business owner, I wouldn’t want it. So, now, customers can direct message you on Yelp as a business owner. A customer can go to Yelp, type in blah blah blah restaurant o what-have-you, and instead of just posting a review or looking through, they can now just I guess essentially chat with you on Yelp. Of course, this is an optional thing so businesses can disable it and not even deal with it. But I feel like this is just going to be… I guess I don’t see the value in this. It seems like this is going to be such a hassle for business and what if a bunch of your competitors are doing it? Then you’re going to feel obligated as a business owner to also do it because they might think that you’re not there and, also, at the same time, it’s going to tell you how long people have been waiting to get a response. I feel like the businesses are going to have to hire someone just to handle this. NASIR: Yeah, I guess it depends. I don’t know how they actually receive it – whether the business owner gets a text message or an email or whatever – but one thing that I don’t like is it’s just another way for Yelp to kind of dig in their claws in the dependence of these businesses, you know, in the sense that, more and more now, it’s not getting any better for these small and medium-sized businesses that get these wacko reviews from the competitors or from previous employees or what-have-you and there’s very little that they can do about it on the Yelp side, especially if they’re put up on a dummy account or whatever and we’ve talked about this in the past. But, now, it’s another reason why these businesses are going to be dependent upon Yelp which I just wish there was a better competitor… I guess there is competitors to Yelp – I guess Google Places and I don’t know what else but I’m sure there’s other directors. But the problem is just Yelp is just so prominent. Otherwise, a lead is a lead, right? If it’s convenient to the customer and they contact the business that they may not have otherwise because of that then I guess that’s good for business. But, long-term-wise and big picture, I’m not necessarily too cool about it. MATT: Yeah, I guess I’m wondering too. I just can’t think of a situation where I would want to ask the business a question. The only question I really ever have for a business is, you know, “How late are you open?” And so, you could find that on the Yelp page. It doesn’t really matter. But, like, what is someone going to chat with a business about?