Yelp University Dataset

If I had to guess, the same guys who screwed over netflix, cost them $10M, then posted the smarmy bullshit below:

http://33bits.org/2010/03/15/open-letter-to-netflix/

In particular, note this clause from yelp's agreement:

"5. Restrictions

You agree that you will not, and will not encourage, assist, or enable others to:

A. display, perform, or distribute any of the Data, or use the Data to update or create Your own business listing information;

B. Use the data in any manner or for any purpose that may violate any law or regulation, or any right of any person including, but not limited to, intellectual property rights, rights of privacy and/or rights of personality, or which otherwise may be harmful (in Yelp's sole discretion) to Yelp, its providers, its suppliers, end users of this website, or Your end users;"

http://www.yelp.com/html/pdf/Dataset_Agreement.pdf

That said, reading the dataset agreement, I'm not sure I'd care to participate even if I could.

edited for formatting

It might not be valuable to competitors, but I wonder if this data set would be useful for someone trying to write fake reviews that get past their filtering mechanisms.

Even making it available to institutions outside the US would be a start. I'm actually doing some work on ratings in the UK at the moment, and this dataset would have been really useful to test some theories I've been developing.

I agree totally on making it available to anyone who is willing to sign up to the terms and conditions.

I wonder why they didn't use Kaggle?

Doesn't look like it.

I think the dataset you mentioned only contains the yelp social graph ie it doesn't have the reviews and stuff.