One local woman's TikTok video about her dog Miso's recent stay at a Wag Hotel in San Francisco has sparked a round of expected online outrage from the dog-owning community.

The woman's name is Michelle, and the TikTok video was posted August 8. In it she describes not being able to access the in-room camera she had paid $120 per night for to monitor her dog's stay, and she describes seeing her dog looking "dirty" in the crowded all-day play area for all the dogs staying at the Wag Hotel location. But it was when she picked him up, Michelle says, that she was most disturbed. She describes Miso arriving home in a "very poor mental state," with his legs "caked" with urine.

Pictures show the golden doodle's legs and underbelly indeed looking urine-y.

@_mitchiemitchie DO NOT LEAVE YOUR PET WITH WAG HOTELS // pls tag fellow california per owners. im physically ill and horrified thinking how @Wag Hotels | Pet Resort treated miso during his stay last weekend. our pets are our family and i trusted wag to provide him a high level of care which obviously did not happen. i cannot fathom how a clean, healthy, well trained dog would willingly roll in urine all weekend when he has NEVER done so. what did you do to my dog and why did you refuse to send the camera feed i paid for during his “deluxe suite” stay? #dogsoftiktok #waghotels #pethotel #goldendoodle ♬ original sound - michelle

To be clear, Michelle, whose TikTok is @_mitchiemitchie, has a relatively popular account where she posts content about working in "Big Tech" and about her dog — and she has one video about the ultra VIP experience at Disneyland that has 4 million views. The Miso video now has over 2 million views.

The story about Miso and Wag Hotels has since been picked up by KTVU, and a rep at Wag Hotels in San Francisco told SFGate, "there were a few issues with Miso's recent stay."

Griggs said the camera in Miso's room was malfunctioning, and further confirmed, "He enjoyed three solid days of supervised play, slept in a private deluxe suite on a memory foam raised bed, had a large appetite, and became a staff favorite."

The Yelp page for the SF Wag Hotel has one of those warnings that come after viral uproars like this about some reviews being unreliable. But if you scroll back through the "not recommended reviews," you can find many positive and negative reviews going back over a decade at this location, long before the recent pile-on. And a number of reviews confirm Michelle's account of the crowded conditions in the all-day play area. One review, from a customer who had 24-hour camera access to their dog, reported seeing him howling and distressed and not receiving dinner until 11 p.m.

"I don't think sticking 40 dogs in a room together with one person is okay in any doggie daycare," writes one reviewer from 2013.

Another reviewer from 2012 wrote, "My good friend worked for this daycare for 3 years and she said they would put 60+ large dogs in a room together with one person overseeing all of them."

Other reviews spoke of dirty conditions, and also had dogs coming home in dirty or agitated states.

Granted these are all first-world problems, and maybe there's only so much you can expect from a corporate dog hotel. But if you're paying what many humans pay for an overnight stay somewhere in order to pamper your fur baby, you probably would be similarly upset with what Michelle describes.

Wag Hotels has now had to lock its Twitter account and limit comments on its Instagram as a result of the dustup, as SFGate notes.

A Larkin Street Quickly boba shop has been accused by the DA of trafficking stolen goods, but that allegation has been sitting in plain sight in their Yelp reviews, and draw your own conclusions on why the shop was “cash only.”

It’s only been a day since San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s bombshell announcement of the arrest and charging the owner of a Tenderloin Quickly with moving stolen goods in a burglary ring. (And it’s the husband of the individual franchise owner, Quoc Le, who is charged, not the larger franchise that has more than 60 locations.) But in the day since, the Chronicle reported that Yelp reviewers have been alleging that a fencing operation has been going on there for years.

This piqued SFist’s curiosity, so we scrolled through those reviews. We found some other highly unusual characteristics to this particular Quickly at 709 Larkin Street.

Notably, hmmm, this 2015 Yelp review says the place is “cash only?” Can’t imagine why that would be! This stands in complete contrast with other SF Quickly locations whose Yelp pages are quite clear that “Quickly accepts credit cards.”

We also see the “cash only claim in this 2017 Yelp review that asserts, “This was my first visit to a Quickly. Not sure if it's the case for all of them, but this one is CASH ONLY.” That same reviewer adds to “Ignore the possibly illegal business to the right of the store and make your way to the counter on the left.”

A 2018 review alleges “come if u lost ur phone. They buy stolen phones & jailbreak it,” accompanied with screenshots of texts from someone trying to recover a stolen phone.

Later that same year, another Yelper alleges “Wait this place is a Quickly's? I guess I was so distracted by the amount of Mac desktops, laptops, and iphones on the counter and floor I hadn't noticed!”

Also from 2018: A review that notes: “Not your typical Quickly's Boba joint. They share space with a super clustered electronic repair "shop" that is literally laid out on one side taking up half of the seating area.” That reviewer also adds, “Another thing, CASH ONLY FAM!”

It’s certainly a political win for Boudin’s office that their investigative work cracked this case, particularly at a time when stolen goods resale is out of control in San Francisco. But it may slightly undermine that investigative work that this information has been sitting in plain sight on Yelp for more than five years. A rep for Boudin's office told the Chronicle they were unaware of these Yelp claims.

Related: Quickly Boba Shop on Larkin Busted In DA's Office Sting, Was Allegedly Helping Front a Car Burglary Ring [SFist]

Image: Yessenia C. via Yelp

All 14 floors that Yelp occupies at the historic Pacific Telephone & Telegraph Co. Building at 140 New Montgomery have been made available for lease this year, in another of a cascade of moves that have shaken up the once hot SF office market.

The San Francisco Business Times reported Wednesday that Yelp is abandoning almost 200,000 square feet of office space that it's held at 140 New Montgomery for most of the last decade, as the company is apparently downsizing its footprint in the city. A Yelp representative tells the paper that the company intends to maintain a headquarters in San Francisco, but obviously a smaller one now that most employees are working remotely, and it's not clear where.

It is also possible that Yelp intends to keep one or more floors of offices at 140 New Montgomery and is in negotiations to do so — the company did not confirm that, and this was based on some conjecture by a real estate agent. The company's lease for floors 2 through 13, signed in 2013, expires in October. Separately it has a lease for the 14th floor that doesn't expire until next year. It's possible that the company has decided not to use its option to renew, but the future is uncertain.

As the Business Times notes, Yelp has been signaling its frustration with the Bay Area, and it could be another example in a string of tech company departures and half-departures in the last couple of years.

In a November filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Yelp discussed how it "expect[s] to continue to face significant competition from other companies in hiring and retaining [qualified] personnel, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, where our headquarters is located and where the cost of living is high... Any further financial constraints we face as a result of COVID-19 may also harm our competitiveness in these talent markets."

Uber announced it was establishing a "second headquarters" in Dallas in August 2019, and both Oracle and Tesla recently announced big plans to locate operations in Austin — with Oracle saying it was moving its official headquarters from Redwood City to the Texas capital.

Facebook announced last May that it was taking employee requests to work remotely "forever," and Twitter announced in October that its employees could work remotely indefinitely as well — which puts in question how much space Twitter intends to occupy in the so-called Twitter building going forward.

Yelp's downsizing decision follows on big news last summer that Pinterest was backing out of a deal to lease a massive 490,000-square-foot space at the new 88 Bluxome Street complex in SoMa, citing the same issues of increased dependence on remote work that Yelp is citing.

Photo courtesy of 140 New Montgomery

The San Francisco-based company synonymous with publishing crowd-sourced reviews on local businesses will now allow users to post complaints about businesses violating COVID-19 safety protocols.

The past few months have seen more than a few instances of individuals and businesses failing to comply with pandemic mandates. (We all remember September's "Hair Gate" scandal that pitted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against the owner of Cow Hollow’s eSalon.) Well, now Yelp is permitting users to hold businesses accountable for sidestepping COVID-19 safety rules.

As reported by KPIX, Yelp announced Tuesday that it has implemented changes on both its website and mobile product that aim to “instill confidence in consumers to continue supporting local businesses.”

"Starting today, Yelp will display if users observed, or did not observe, the enforcement of social distancing and staff wearing masks," reads a blog post from the company. "We know many businesses are prioritizing the health and safety of their customers. This new update further highlights how businesses have adapted to keep their customers safe, and aims to instill confidence in consumers to continue supporting local businesses."

Much like how users can provide Yelp with feedback on whether or not a business is “kid-friendly” or “great for groups,” the company is now using user-submitted observations to reveal if businesses are implementing "safety practices during the pandemic."

Currently, “social distancing enforced” and “staff wears masks” are among the few descriptors where detailed user feedback can be displayed; Yelp has also said feedback from the previous 28 days will be used and all complaints are evaluated daily to keep the warnings "accurate and current."

The company, too, will soon start showing if an eatery or bar offers things like meal kits, contactless menus, and climate-controlled outdoor dining areas amid those features growing in popularity since the pandemic began.

These recent changes also come after Yelp added warnings on businesses that were accused of “overtly racist actions" amid 2020's civic unrest and BLM activism.

Related: Yelp Data Shows 5,000 San Francisco Area Businesses Have Closed Since Pandemic Began

Bay Area Bar and Restaurant Owners Furious to Find Out Yelp Has Launched Fundraisers on Their Behalf

Now 15 Years Old, Yelp Is Gung-Ho on Letting Its Users Shape Their Search

Photo: Courtesy of Yelp

Bay Area eateries have been plagued by a recent onslaught of piss-poor reviews on sites like Yelp and Tripadvisor  — not related to food, mind you... but in regards to enforcing mandated COVID-19 safety measures and issues with third-party delivery drivers. And a new tongue-in-cheek billboard in SoMa is helping bring attention to the matter, and help save local restaurants in the process.

Karens, Kens, and covidiots have altogether made 2020 even worse than it already is. The OG SF Karen yelled at a minority for chalking "Black Lives Matter" outside their own property; one local Ken blocked an individual from entering the parking garage to their own apartment complexes; a slew of regional covidiots continue to leave scathing online restaurant reviews — berating those establishments for enforcing face mask-wearing policies and delayed delivery times conducted through third-party apps. (And as we learned some three or so years ago: Yelp reviews have the ability to either catalyze or hobble a restaurant's success.)

But SF-based digital signage startup Raydiant says enough is enough, calling out these misguided, malicious reviews via a series of "Karen-inspired" billboards as part of its Karen’s Killer Reviews petition.

"Dear Yelp, stop letting Karen's kill restaurants because of third party delivery app issues," reads on the company's Karen-themed signs, located just three blocks from Yelp's SF headquarters, per ABC7. "It's not the restaurant's fault."

In addition to the huge sign near Yelp's San Francisco headquarters, another one is can be found in New York City; the local news outlet also notes that "similar, smaller signs" are being displayed on "pedicabs and taxis."

Raydiant says that many of these small business owners are too afraid to publicly complain about the reviews. But, because they're a startup and operating outside the realm, Radiant doesn't "have to worry about the impact that can come from receiving negative Yelp reviews" — which is exactly why they decided to do something about this.

According to ABC7, Raydiant will keep up the campaign for the next several months to not only encourage the conversation around the problem — but to help thwart further Karen-ness.

In early August, a report published by Yelp showed that some 5,000 businesses have closed — with over 2,000 of them now permanently shut down — since the global health crisis grabbed society by the loins. A separate finding from Yelp also found some 370 restaurants in the San Francisco metro area have now permanently closed during this shaky time... and that report was dated back in July, so odds are that figure is substantially larger now.

So, in a nutshell: Don't be that person (who publicly shames a struggling local eatery for enforcing safety measures and blames them for getting cold food, ordered from Uber Eats).

For more information on Karen’s Killer Reviews, and to see how you can upload a Karen-infused review you come across to the campaign, visit karenskillerreviews.com.

Related: Bay Area Bar and Restaurant Owners Furious to Find Out Yelp Has Launched Fundraisers on Their Behalf

New Report Says 370 Restaurants Have Permanently Closed In the Bay Area

Image: Twitter via @TryRaydiant

It’s been an unprecedented, extinction-level time for small businesses across the nation. Moreover, new findings from Yelp reveal that some 5,000 SF area businesses have closed since the global health crisis started — with over 2,000 of them now permanently shut down.

San Francisco and other Bay Area metropolitans, like other corners of the country, continue to sit in an odd limbo between earlier lockdown restrictions and the everyday frivolity we all took for granted prior in the year. Most people are aware of the toll SARS-CoV-2 has taken on our local, state, and national economies — but concrete figures lend a certain level of reality missing with what-if scenarios. Case in point, fresh information from Yelp depicts a small business apocalypse hard to wrap one's left lobe around: 2,000 SF area businesses have gone the way of the dodo bird in just the past five months, with at least another 3,000 temporarily shuttered.

As reported on by the Chronicle, the popular website — which is also headquartered in San Francisco — that aggregates user reviews of businesses released findings that 2,065 businesses in the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward area are marked "permanently closed” on the platform with another 3,000 businesses described as "temporarily closed," according to Yelp.

Per Yelp, the greater San Francisco area is third on the list of total closures, sitting only behind Los Angeles and New York; Chicago and the Dallas-Fort Worth area came in at fourth and fifth, respectively.

Expectedly, businesses in neighborhoods synonyms with abundant tourist traffic — North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, and, like we touched on this morning, Chinatown — are faring the worst. These numbers, too, are almost certainly to balloon with congress still at a stalemate with fleshing out the next stimulus rollout plan, which would include an injection of support to the expiring Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

And with no set date insight for when indoor dining can return to San Francisco, there aren't too many buoys on the horizon that may offer some support for the city's waning business landscape. A permit measure that's set to allow for an expansion of outdoor dining and shopping spaces will, however, appear on the November ballot; congress is still negotiating a new COVID relief package that's expected to both simplify PPP loan forgiveness — the most recent deadline to apply for it having just passed Saturday — and create a new round of PPP loans.

The unemployment rate in California was near as much 15 percent an in June, an almost four-fold increase over the same month a year prior; Trump's $400 enhanced unemployment benefit executive order is expected to go into effect in lieu of a congressional agreement on a new stimulus rollout, and the State of California is set to use funds to help meet the previous $600 weekly benefit that ended in July.

Related: New Report Says 370 Restaurants Have Permanently Closed In the Bay Area

San Franciscans Continue Leaving for More 'Comfortable Lives' Elsewhere as Rental Prices Plunge

Image: Wikimedia Commons (Taken in 2018)

The voluntary listing of precautions, like whether they provide hand sanitizer, is a new feature that restaurants can list on their Yelp page if they choose to.

Some tech companies have actually excelled under our now three-month-old shelter-in-place order, but Yelp is not one of them. When the online review site laid off 1,000 employees in early April, Eater SF reported Yelp restaurant traffic was down 64 percent, and nightlife traffic on the site was down 81 percent. Just prior to the layoffs, Yelp faced the public relations fiasco of launching GoFundMe campaigns on establishments’ behalf without getting consent to do so, a move which won rave reviews like “Fuck all of these people entirely” and “Yelp is fucking scum. Do they honestly have time to fuck with this shit right now?"

In order to pivot back into restaurants’ good graces, and to get back some badly needed traffic, Food and Wine reports that Yelp has introduced a widget to describe restaurants’ COVID-19 precautions. These self-reported listing options include some useful things, like “Hand sanitizer available,” “Contactless payment available,” and “Temperature checks enforced.” Other listing options are just basic things that every business is doing, like “Social distancing enforced,” or “Masks required for customers.”

Yelp said in a Tuesday company blog post that “We’re launching a new COVID-19 section on Yelp business pages, which features important updates, including details on health and safety measures the business has implemented and updates to their service offerings. Businesses can indicate whether they’re offering dine-in service, outdoor seating, in-person visits, as well as virtual services, curbside pickup and delivery options.”

It’s true that many restaurants are not tech-savvy enough to update this information on their web pages, so yes, it could be theoretically helpful in that regard. And while Yelp’s announcement says that “Users can view the new COVID-19 section on Yelp business pages on web today, and by downloading the latest version of the iOS and Android app” — verbiage which does not acknowledge the information being available in the mobile web browser — SFist put this to the test and confirmed this information is very much available on Yelp’s mobile site, with no downloading of the app necessary, as seen below.

It’s only a one-day-old feature, so very few restaurants are listing this information yet. We went to Yelp and generically searched “Restaurants,” and only two of the first ten San Francisco results we saw listed this. (Your results will probably vary because of the algorithm.) Yelp also added some features for QR coding for a spot on the waitlist and “Manual Wait Controls” for restaurants, though these features are unlikely to appeal to anyone beyond Yelp power users and eateries who spend a lot of time maintaining their Yelp presence.

Related: SF Restaurants Get Ready for New Al Fresco Era — Here's a Running List Of Who Will Be Open [SFist]

Image: Yelp

Yelp has never exactly been seen as a friend to the Bay Area restaurant community so much as a necessary evil they've begrudgingly had to live with for a decade and a half. So it's no surprise that a well-meaning but arguably tone-deaf effort to automatically launch fundraisers on businesses' behalf — a partnership between Yelp and GoFundMe — which they then have to opt out of is inspiring some passionately negative responses.

Yelp rolled out this program three days ago, as the company announced, in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, pledging to match donations up to $1 million from the Yelp Foundation. This follows a somewhat opportunistic move by Yelp on March 20 offering a $25 million relief fund to "eligible" restaurants struggling during the coronavirus pandemic — with eligibility requirements including those who are already paying for Yelp Ads campaigns, and offering free trials of Yelp Ads to those that aren't.

But Eater reports Friday that bars and restaurants including DNA Lounge and Wrecking Ball Coffee Roasters are now noticing Yelp's imposition of "Donate" buttons on their Yelp pages, and they are none too pleased. Some received notifications from Yelp that these fundraisers were being launched, but businesses had to "claim" fundraisers to either opt in or follow further instructions to opt out. And some likely see the "Donate" buttons on Yelp as bad PR in a time of crisis.

To quote longtime DNA Lounge owner Jamie Zawinski, speaking to Eater, "I don’t really have a lot to say about this. Fuck all of these people entirely... Really, get all the way right up in there and fuck them."

And to quote another local restaurateur who remained anonymous: "Yelp is fucking scum. Do they honestly have time to fuck with this shit right now?"

For those who aren't aware of the background when it comes to Yelp, their history in the Bay Area is replete with stories of Yelp Elite members acting way more entitled than they ever had a right to be, and stories of aggressive ad sales tactics that many called extortion, but ultimately an appeals court just called aggressive. (The company was accused of manipulating ratings and burying good reviews for businesses that refused to pay for Yelp Ads, while boosting good ratings for those that did. A three-judge panel on the 9th Circuit concluded in 2014 that Yelp's tactics, which were said by plaintiffs to be doing economic harm, were just "hard bargaining.")

Holding businesses' hands to the fire and making them choose between paying Yelp and allowing negative reviews to bubble up a little too often was never looked on too kindly in these parts. So a seemingly altruistic effort to launch fundraisers — something that many restaurants and bars already did last week to help out their staffs — isn't being embraced or trusted here in SF, with good reason. DNA Lounge, by the way, has its own Patreon you can give to, and there's a space on DNA's homepage to make a one-time donation as well.

Yelp gave a comment to Eater saying of the Donate buttons, saying "we have paused the automatic rollout of this feature... [because] it has come to our attention that some businesses did not receive a notification with opt-out instructions."

Related: Site Launches To Make It Easier To Support Local Restaurants Through Gift Cards; Nightclubs Look To Crowdfunding

Yelp—the crowd-sourced review forum virtually everyone visits before heading to a new eatery—is (finally) giving users the ability to personalize their profiles to appease certain dietary and lifestyle needs.

Ketos, vegans, vegetarians, and everyone in between, throw up your forks in celebration! The San Francisco-headquartered restaurant-review service has now introduced a slew of personalized functions to its over 2.4 million monthly users, making it easier to satisfy your niche cravings. Rather than filtering through preferences every time you use the app, users can now customize their profiles to only show offerings that abide by their lifestyle and dietary choices.

The reasoning behind this big move? Yelp has noticeably been refocusing their product to cater to users in more all-encompassing ways; their social media campaign, #YelpForYou, is evidence of just that.

"As Yelp turns 15 this year, we're embarking on one of our most significant product updates with the introduction of a new personalized experience," said Vivek Patel, Yelp's chief product officer, speaking to CNN in response to the recently introduced search options. "Yelp has always been a helpful discovery platform that surfaces great local businesses based on your search.”

“By making it more personalized, we're saving people time and giving them an easy way to find the right business for them,” Patel adds. “Now, Yelp will help you discover businesses and activities based on who you are and what you like to do."

But Yelp’s pivot to these specialized settings is also a nod to a greater cultural trend: the growing interest in highly personalized eating styles.

“In the history of Yelp, this is the first time two people searching for the same thing from the same context are going to see different, personalized results,” said head of Consumer Product, Akhil Ramesh, to TechCrunch.

Ramesh also harped that, in lieu of more obvious algorithmic inputs, Yelp will focus on using those detailed (and shared) preferences to mold and build a user’s result and home pages, citing that this is the “human way” to approach search.

Aside from the dietary and lifestyle filters, the app can now help users hone in more particular, left-of-center yearnings, to boot.

Looking for the best bubble tea within a half-mile of FiDi? Check. Want to find an eatery that, say, side-saddles an art gallery or yoga studio? Go for it. Keen on finding a BBQ bastion with gender-neutral restrooms? Yes, you can even do that now.

These “For You” options can be toggled on and off, and can be changed at will.

Photo: Courtesy of Eaters Collective, via Unsplash

We've heard it all before when it comes to gripes about Yelp, why many in the food scene hate it, and why many avid diners think it's indispensable nonetheless. But here's one more perspective from voracious eater and traveler Andrew Zimmern, host of the show Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. Zimmern knows a thing or two about arriving in a city he's not too familiar with and trying to figure out where to eat. And from his perspective, as he explains in this new Business Insider interview, this is where Yelp is useless for someone like him.

"If you're aggregating a lack of expertise, then when I plug in 'best sushi bar in Los Angeles,' Yelp doesn't help me at all." He adds, "So, if you are a huge food geek like me that really believes in quality — not expensive food, just quality. Above all other things — quality. If you're into quality, Yelp is not for you."

Basically he's saying: No matter how much of an Elite Yelper you might be, he doesn't trust that you know quality from hype.

Zimmern continues that he doesn't think this crowd-sourcing of opinion is either good or bad for the food industry. But, he says, if you want to know where to go in a new city, his best bet these days is "look up who the 4 or 5 better food writers are in that town and the 4 or 5 better chefs in that town... [then] go on to their Instagram and Twitter or Facebook timelines, and I just go back a couple weeks and I write down all the places that these people have been eating or taking pictures of." He basically takes a poll of these people, and whichever spots show up the most in their feeds, he goes there.

And he makes a good point: If you're actually after a well curated list of hot spots or the best sushi bars — and you don't have a place like SFist to turn to, ahem — you should at least know who you're getting tips from, and food people in the know are probably going to be more trustworthy, taste-wise, than Becky L. who uses the phrase "The service was JUST OK" in every single review.

Previously: Doom And Gloom From Analysts As Yelp Stock Tumbles And Advertisers Flee

The suspicions raised by some increasingly frequent (and frantic) voicemails left by Yelp ad salespeople for local businesses were borne out this week, when the crowdsourced ratings site announced first-quarter earnings that led to a far lower forecast for this year's revenue.

According to Bloomberg, "a wave of advertisers stopped spending with the online review guide in the first quarter," which caused analysts to fear for the company's long-term sustainability.

The company, which has long faced allegations of manipulation of reviews and aggressive if not outright shady sales tactics, has lost money even in quarters where revenue was good. But as of January, Yelp COO Jed Nachman said in an analyst call late Tuesday, ad buyers who'd been with the site for about a year started dropping off, in part because Yelp "started shifting the way it charged for ads," Bloomberg reports.

"The company began addressing the issue and was able to “course-correct” and saw better results in March and particularly in April," Bloomberg reports, which is about the same time missed calls from numbers associated with Yelp started mounting at the business I own, up from one or two a week to as many as four a day. (God bless Google Voice's "spam" function.) Other business owners I know reported the same phenomenon, with one local restauranteur who asked to remain anonymous saying that he's stopped picking up the phone during certain hours as "I know it'll be Yelp and I'm scared to piss them off."

MKM Partners analyst Rob Sanderson expressed skepticism at Yelp's assertion that they'd turned things around by March, saying "In a high-churn business, investors should rightfully ask that if retention issues were so easy to remedy in one to two months, then why was this not done at any time in the five years since IPO.”

After the company said late Tuesday that it had lowered its yearlong expectations from $880-$900 million to $865-$850 million, its stock dropped by 28 percent, Business Insider reports. Net revenue for the first quarter of 2017 was "$197.3 million, missing analyst estimates of $198.4 million," which actually doesn't sound that terrible. You can read their full Q1 earnings report here.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Mark Mahaney seems dubious about the company's prospects, saying in a note that “There are now substantial questions about Yelp’s salesforce execution and its current value proposition for advertisers."

"Fundamentals are deteriorating,” he said. “This won’t be a quick fix.”

Related: New Study Links Yelp Ratings With SF Restaurant Closures

It's no secret that the "unpaid internships" even the most qualified of us might have been offered in years past have been replaced at many tech companies by rates nearly twice America's median income. We've talked about this before, when we looked at an informal intern pay survey from 2014 and a similar one from almost exactly a year ago. But in news that might be a consolation to the more schadenfreude-y among us, a look at summer intern pay rates for 2017 reflect lower — or, at best, the same — pay this over last.

This, according to Mill Valley-based job site Glassdoor, which in its "25 Highest Paying Internships in America for 2017" report says that Facebook is intern payday number one, with a median monthly internship salary of $8,000.

According to last year's data, Facebook was sixth on a list behind companies like Pinterest and Twitter, neither of which even charted on this year's Glassdoor list. In the 2014 list, Facebook paid $6.8K per month.

Salesforce snagged the #4 slot on the 2017 list, with a median monthly pay rate of $6,450. Last year, their pay was a reported $6,500, but Towers don't come cheap so I'm sure those $50 here and there came in handy. It doesn't appear that the company made the 2014 list.

Apple's #6 on this year's list, with a median monthly intern pay of $6,400. That's down from a reported $6,700 in 2016 and $6,500 (plus a $3,500 monthly housing stipend) in 2014.

You get the picture. Some of the other companies that made the list this year are Yelp ($6,400, down from $7,300), Yahoo ($6,080, down from $6,500) and Google ($6,000, down from $6,600). You can see Glassdoor's entire 2017 rankings here, and can compare it to 2016's widely-reported salary survey by Yelp intern Rodney Folz and 2014's likely Glassdoor-based salary report.

The median salary for a full-time US worker is currently $51,350, Glassdoor says, and according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics, in 2016 it was $44,148. Does that mean the American Everyman is catching up to the Silicon Valley kids? Not yet, as that kid's annual Facebook income would still be $96,000...that is, if she didn't have to head back to school in the fall.

Previously: Tech Industry Interns Making Upwards Of $10,000 Per Month
Here's How Much Tech Companies Are Paying Interns Who Can Code

A new study by a pair of Harvard Business School researchers, focusing on Bay Area restaurants between 2008 and 2016, found that minimum wage hikes do indeed impact restaurants' ability to stay in business, but specifically they are more likely to impact restaurants with average or below average ratings on Yelp. As the Chronicle reports, via the study by Michael and Dara Lee Luca, the "survival of the fittest" when it comes to restaurants can be tracked with some predictability by looking at how highly Yelpers have rated them — with restaurants that have 3.5-star ratings or lower having a significantly higher chance of shutting down when costs increase.

Specifically they said that, in the period they studied, looking at 11 Bay Area cities that saw minimum wage hikes over the last decade, a one-dollar increase in the minimum wage led to a 14 percent greater chance of a restaurant with a 3.5-star rating shutting down. That chance went up to 25 percent if the restaurant had a 2.5-star rating. Meanwhile, restaurants with 4.5- and 5-star ratings saw no discernible impact from the wage hike.

This suggests that restaurants with high ratings and very steady business have less to worry about as costs rise, and they can absorb them and better offset them with menu price increases. But in a competitive restaurant scene like San Francisco's, there is no room for mediocrity, and the herd will be culled that much faster, as the Chron's Jonathan Kauffman notes.

In the case of The Corner Store, which closed last month, owners Ezra Berman and Miles Palliser blamed the cost of doing business in SF on the restaurant's failure, even though they supported the minimum wage hike on the ballot. But the restaurant also had received a couple of less than stellar reviews in the Chronicle, held 3.5 stars on Yelp, and one can just as easily attribute the closure to the fickleness of the public as a restaurant ages out of its "hot new spot" phase.

But, Kauffman also notes, the study doesn't take into account the biases of Yelpers. For instance, "Are restaurants in the Tenderloin generally ranked lower than ones in Pacific Heights? Are Yelpers more likely to be critical of restaurants serving Chinese, Mexican or Indian cuisine than those serving high-end Californian? And how does that translate into economic vulnerability?"

And as Foreign Cinema chef-owner Gayle Pirie tells the Chronicle, "Math is black and white, and restaurants operate in the gray."

Gather round, children, while I tell you a tale of long ago. The year was 1998, the month was July, and the only decent multiplex in San Francisco was the Kabuki. Sure, there was (and is) Opera Plaza, with its teeny tiny screens, but if you wanted more than three choices it was the (not yet Sundance, and often a bit downmarket) Kabuki.

And then on July 10, the 14-screen AMC 1000 Van Ness opened. It was a big day -- they passed out free small popcorns to all comers. My roommate Eric and I saw Small Soldiers, about which I remember nothing, but I do remember that free popcorn! I also remember walking home with Eric because the 5 had crapped out that day (some things never change) and as we passed Alamo Square, Eric mused "I think that's the nicest movie theater I've ever been in." Having moved to SF from small-town Indiana with Eric a year before, I agreed.

A lot can change in nineteen years! Eric now lives with his husband in the Mission, while I live near mine by the beach. As his husband works in the film industry, he sees movies at special screenings in even fancier theaters than our Toy Soldiers date. I, however, still go to 1000 Van Ness, though I rarely pay for a ticket, as SFist film critic Rain Jokinen is often kind enough to allow me to accompany her to press screenings. At press screenings, if you wondered, there is not free popcorn.

However, if a tipster to Hoodline is correct, there are free bedbugs.

"I know for a fact," tipster "Jon C" tells Hoodline, that he was bitten in the multiplex's theater number 2.

It's likely other people around me did not get bit, because they had long-sleeved clothing on or just that one chair was infested ...

I know I got it from the theater, because those are fresh bites. I am familiar with bedbugs; I do not have them in my home but I have gotten bitten at other locations. Evidence of the bites go away in about a half an hour unless you scratch them or you get bit in an area that has very tender skin. I counted 13 bites.

I reported it to the manager, who gave me a free movie pass for my trouble and apologized. He also took a photograph of my arm.

Hoodline found other bedbug reports on The Bedbug Registry, dating as far back as 2010. Here's a selection:

1/13/2015: I went there a year ago in 2014 and came out with welts on my arm. Thought it was random so went back on 1/6/15 and came back with welts along my collarbone and neck. They have cloth seats that look really worn. Never going back!!!!!

6/19/2012: This summer has been a big one for movies, saw Rock of Ages in theater 4 and came out with the "breakfast, lunch and dinner" triple bite around my ankle. This follows up being bitten there years ago during the Dark Knight. I'm pretty sure this place is infested.

1/05/2012: Went to this theater on Monday 1/2 to watch the Muppets. I came out with a cluster of 7 welts on the back of my right arm (I was wearing a short sleeve shirt)They really look a lot like bed bugs. I'm really freaked out. Going to call theater and go home and wash everything in my apt.

1/17/2011: My husband and I have been to this movie theater twice in the last 3 weeks - both times I was bitten on my legs and arms and left with several welts! We will not go there again, I am not sure what it is but they do have a serious problem there!

11/06/2011: Twice I've come out of this theater with welts. Never going again

When I told Rain I was working on this story and asked if she'd ever seen (or felt any bedbugs) at the theater, her initial response was "OH NOOOOOOOOOOO!," a reasonable one for anyone who has to go to an allegedly bedbug-infested place as part of her job. She's never seen any bedbugs there, she says, but suggested that it might be time for the venue to get a remodel, bugs or no bugs.

Barring a remodel, however, there's some evidence (if one can call a Yelp writeup "evidence") that management is aware of the alleged problem. In a review from February of 2016, Lou "Wolf" S., who says he's a longtime 1000 Van Ness staffer, claims that they did "pest control" following some bedbug complaints last year.

Been working here part time for about 5 years and it's a great work environment with a manager who helps me out a lot by working around my other job's schedule. it's a bargain going to the first show at almost half price regular ticket sales. Great location and budget friendly for older folks if you sneak in your sugar free cookies ^^. We just did pest control after a few bedbug complaints, so that problem should be over. Please do bring it to our attention immediately as it is a big problem in SF and elsewhere.

Well, Lou, if you're still working there, might be time for another treatment...or maybe we should send in the real Wolf.

Related: San Francisco Jumps Up Four Spots In National List Of Bed Bug-Ridden Cities

San Francisco-based ratings company Yelp is getting five stars from LGBTQ advocates today. After stepping up yesterday to participate in an amicus brief supporting trans student Gavin Grimm in his lawsuit against a Virginia school that wants to force him to use the restroom of the gender he was assigned at birth — making it one of 53 US companies such as Apple and Airbnb to do so according to the Associated Press — Yelp's head of Diversity and Inclusion, Rachel Williams, revealed a new feature to highlight gender neutral bathrooms for the help and safety of all its users. As Williams writes to the company's official blog, Yelp will soon show users what stores, bars, and restaurants offer single-stalled bathrooms identified as gender neutral.

"On desktop and mobile versions of Yelp, users will be able to see whether or not a business offers gender-neutral bathrooms to patrons," writes Williams. "We will also be rolling out the ability to search for businesses on Yelp by the Gender Neutral Restrooms attribute in the weeks to come."

Yelp explains that it will collect this information via users, as through the above questionnaire, and it will allow business owners to edit the gender neutral restrooms attribute on their business user account. Yelp is the latest, but far from the only, technology company to embrace inclusivity when it comes to nonbinary and transgender users. In December, for example, Tinder consulted with trans advocates to overhaul its gender identity options and make room for users who wish to identify their gender in a way other than "male" or "female" on the app.

Related: SF To Designate Nation's First Transgender Historic District In The Tenderloin