Find songs, share them with your friends, and even create playlists.

Building buzz is a lot harder when Yelp enters new cities. Last year the team grappled with how to take off in markets such as Chicago, New York, Boston, and Seattle. At first they tried a simple approach: For the first few weeks they would pay people $1 per review, in order to stock those areas with reviews. That filled the site with content, but not all of it was good. And it failed to give the community legs. “It didn’t do anything to build an initial community,” says Yelp’s Donaker. “These weren’t passionate users.”

Our goal in this research was to examine the effects of increasing the number of product features on consumers’ expected and experienced product utilities. In three studies, we showed that increasing the number of product features has a positive effect on perceived capability, but a negative effect on perceived usability.

Our goal in this research was to examine the effects of increasing the number of product
features on consumers’ expected and experienced product utilities. In three studies, we showed
that increasing the number of product features has a positive effect on perceived capability, but a
negative effect on perceived usability.