Yelp
In late 2011, Drake dropped “The Motto,” a hip hop anthem that reminded all of us that, indeed, we only live once. By 2012 the phrase YOLO was everywhere. You were saying it, your friends were saying it, people were even using it in their yelp reviews (sample usage: “It was my first time at Shake Shack and you know I had to YOLO that meal!”).
The acronym was a bona fide pop-culture trend, and you don’t need hard data to prove that. But in case you want it anyway, you can now monitor trends from the past eight years using a new tool from Yelp.
2013 was peak “YOLO” usage in Yelp reviews. Yelp
Called Yelp Trends, the tool scours Yelp’s 57 millions reviews for how often certain words have been used in various cities. Yelp has plenty of ways to parse its data. You might remember its previous exploration, the WordMap, which validated hipster stereotypes everywhere. The new trends tool uses that same data set, only instead of the main focus being location, it’s time.
The data is charted on a line graph reaching as far back as 2006 (‘04-’05 were slow years for the new service). You can see, for instance, that in the early months of 2013 the word cronut was but a twinkle in San Franciscan foodies’ eyes, meanwhile it was in full swing in NYC. Similarly, if you search “fireplace” and “rooftop” in Boston, you’ll see how they are inversely charted based on seasonality.
The tool isn’t an exact science. It’s not as definitive as, say, Google’s trend mapping or as granular as our food trend analysis. But within the narrow context of Yelp, it’s actually pretty illuminating.
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