I visited Spain last summer and my family would typically just walk around where we were looking for a restaurant that seemed good, and almost always got stuck in tourist traps with bad Americanized food at high prices. When we started using Yelp to find places to eat we found little hole-in-the-wall tapas places with absolutely no American influence and amazing food that we still talk about to this day.

It has for me. It has basically eliminated truly bad restaurant visits for me, and alerted me to some really cool new experiences.

Personally I've discovered quite a few restaurants that I enjoyed quite a bit thanks to Yelp. Google reviews are starting to become more common and comparable, but back then the Google reviews were very sparse and usually only people talking about bad experiences, whereas Yelp was more mixed.

Yelp remains very helpful to me in many ways. Looking up the restaurants in an area, filtering by various things (are they open? do they take reservations? what's the noise level?), making reservations, etc.

I know Yelp has a shady underbelly, but pretending that it doesn't have anything to offer is just being intellectually dishonest.

I have found Yelp to be better than Google Maps at telling me what the options are for grabbing a bite to eat nearby. I hardly ever read the reviews.

Actually, I used to read the Yelp complaints about the ice cream place near me, which had a famously cranky owner. Those often made me laugh; does that count as joy?

I think that we tend to only hear the horror stories. I've never really used yelp, but I know many that have and found it useful as at least a barometer of an area. I'm a contrarian so I find I'm happier if I don't know how others feel about things.

I disagree. Though it is not Yelp, I have seen business develop from customers who would have been out of reach to them if not for the Internet. Particularly in the hospitality business.

Based on what?