Winners of 2009: Yelp

In reviewing the digital stars of 2009, Yelp stands out as a big winner. Yelp, which combines user reviews of restaurants, clubs and other businesses with social networking and geo-location, saw impressive growth throughout the year. Users can locate businesses in a particular geographic area, read reviews from other users, and write their own...adding to the current tally of more than 9 million reviews.

In December, according to the company, it had more than 26 million unique users, many of them accessing the service via mobile. All of this traffic has attracted a lot of outside attention. Yelp reportedly turned down a $500 million buy-out offer from Google in December. Then they added another $100 million in venture capital funding in January of this year.