Nestoria UK Blog

For our final Nestoria interview of 2008 we are lucky enough to chat with Stephan Uhrenbacher, founder of innovative pan-European local reviews site and recent Nestoria partner Qype. Besides being a great site, Qype is a fascintating business in a technical and commercial sense because it simultaneously grapples with issues of search, geolocation, user generated content and internationalization – many of the same challenges we face here at Nestoria. Prior to starting Qype, Stephan built up extensive online experience working in various roles at DocMorris.com (an online pharmacy), Bild (Germany’s largest newspaper), and European web1.0 super-brand LastMinute.com

1. Qype recently raised funds. What are your plans? Continued geographic expansion? Acquisitions? More wild parties for loyal qype users?

The local space is hyper competitive. We are continuing on our track to provide a great solution for users who want to share what is good in their city. At the same time we are developing several exciting mobile products, like the new Qype Radar for iphone. And we are continuing to build our customer base of local businesses which can attract customers in a very cost effective way via Qype.

2. In the current economic climate do you see small businesses embracing new models like Qype to win more customers or retreating to the tried and true?

It is certainly harder to convince people to try something new. However, as Qype drastically lowers the cost for local businesses to attract new customers, we do see a great uptake also in the UK after a phenomenal start in Germany.

3. Over the last year the mobile space has seen tremendous innovation with Apple’s iPhone and Nokia’s purchase of Navteq and subsequent emphasis on local services. What are Qype’s plans in this space?

We are currently preparing for the launch of Qype Radar for the iphone, which gives you an exact picture of what is great or not so great around you. We also have released a first version of our API, which some providers are using to integrate services for other mobile and navigation devices.

4. Qype’s standard directory content is greatly enhanced with user submitted reviews. Users seem keen to write about, for example, their favorite restaurants. What possibilities do you see for reviews or user content in a less frequently used service like property search?

We find it is all about frequency of usage and scale of the site. So of course we get more reviews on restaurants than on the lesser frequented services. But with the current scale of our website, 7 M unique users per month today, we see that we get a very solid review base over less often used services.

thanks Stephan for your time. Anyone interested in Qype’s progress should subscribe to their blog, and you can keep up with Stephan via Twitter.

past Nestoria interviews: Gary Gale, Muki Haklay, and Brad Inman.