Yelp.com (NYSE: YELP) is a customer review website founded in San Francisco in 2004. It aims to bring together locals to connect people to local businesses. So far, “Yelp communities have been established in major cities in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Austria, -Bas, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium and Australia” (Yelp.com, 2013) and many other countries. As a typical Web 2.0 product (ref?), Yelp has excellent interactive characters that allow users to search for information about all kinds of local services, and at the same time post their own reviews about a specific service after having had the experience. Yelp.com now has over 40 million registered users called Yelpers from around the world and received a monthly average of 117 million unique visitors in the third quarter of 2013 (Yelp.com, 2013). Here in this essay, Yelp.com, as a case study, will be analyzed according to two main theories of "Limited Effects Theory": "Uses and Gratification Theory" and "Uses and Gratification Theory". two-step flow”. Some of the author's personal experiences as a Yelper will also be found in this essay to illustrate the theory. Different from the hypodermic needle model (Williams, 2003: 174-178) or other early opinions defining the public as a passive group that only passively consumes media messages without any resistance (CITE?PPT), the " paradigm of limited effects” shows the active side of the public. The “limited effects paradigm” shows that the public is not made up of people who are “passive, isolated, impressionable entities from mass society.” In contrast, the public can be seen as individuals who “interpret what they have seen and heard in accordance with their own.” established beliefs" (Williams, 2003, pp. 174-178) The emergence of "limited effect theories" is the first time...... middle of article ......website.ReferencesHicks, A., Comp, S., Horovitz, J., Hovarter, M., Miki, M. and Bevan, J. (2012). “Why people use Yelp. com: An exploration of uses and gratifications. » Computers in Human Behavior, volume ??, pages ??.Long, P. and Wall, T. 2009. Media Studies. Harlow, England: Pearson Longman.Officialblog.yelp.com. 2013. Official Yelp Blog. [online] Available at: http://officialblog.yelp.com/ [Accessed: November 17, 2013].Williams, K. 2003. Understanding media theory. London: Arnold.Yelp.co.uk. 2013. Swansea's restaurants, dentists, pubs, beauty salons, doctors. [online] Available at: http://www.yelp.co.uk/swansea-swansea-gb [Accessed: November 17, 2013].Yelp.co.uk. 2013. About us | Yelp. [online] Available at: http://www.yelp.co.uk/about [Accessed: November 17, 2013].Yelp.co.uk. 2013. Press | Yelp. [online] Available at: http://www.yelp.co.uk/press [Accessed: November 18 2013].