I have a couple of hair-stylist friends who've been dying for this kind of service - there's almost a kind of lock-in with the salon that they work out of, where changing causes them a great deal of frustration. Having a direct line to the service provider would save them (and their clients) a ton of hassle, and also even up the power-balance. Everyone wins!

I'm personally a little bit jealous about Opez though - building a product by establishing relationships to the best bartenders, servers, etc.? Must be awesome :)

http://www.styleseat.com/ recently launched but more of a boooking tool.

I hate this title. Does "Yelp meets Facebook" really tell you more than describing the service?

I came here to say the same thing...Is this a social network for business reviews? Because that's all I'm getting from this title and that doesn't sound very enticing to me.

Yeah, and anyway this service sounds more like Yelp meets LinkedIn

If you really wanted to follow your favorite service provider, wouldn't you just friend them on facebook or follow them on twitter? The relationship is already there, so wouldn't reviews be unnecessary?

I know many hair stylists, and since they only rent seats usually at places, they are pretty familiar with their clients. They already friend on facebook, follow on twitter, or have email addresses and phone numbers.

Agree with the reviews. Also its sort of hard to trust the reviews from people that chose to follow you, meaning they already have a good relationship with the provider. This already puts their review into question.

I'm not really friends with my hair cutter but i do hate when they leave and next guy just has to learn all over again how to avoid making me look like a soldier.

I hope the world runs out of ideas for social networks soon.

I think it's a great idea and concept! It definitely hits a subset of Yelp but on a more personal and individualized sense. Good luck! In terms of Feedback on design I would try and ditch having the bright green everywhere. IMO, it looks like MS Paint coloring so it comes off a tad tacky.

The neon green on the Opez site is giving me a headache. And the white text on green background is really hard to read. It's an interesting idea, and may be helpful if they can integrate with some of the existing networks - I just really hope they change the color scheme.

That's an awesome idea and I hope it works out well. I'd love to be able to follow my favorite hair stylist and beautician around. I also hope my customers will want to follow their favorite database consultant :)

Maybe highlight a better example than a bartender? I can image looking on an Opez page for a tutor, lawyer, or accountant, but I'm just not sure what I'd need my bartender to tell me via Opez...

Maybe he learned to mix a mean shirley temple.

While at first glace i'd think it competes with Yelp and Angie's List, it does have a different angle. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

Ultimately, word of mouth has a very powerful influence on which service providers people choose - but more likely from people you trust as well.

Having said that, not only is the rating of the service provider important, but also the quality of the relationship of the viewer to the rater.

This is neat! I can think of many potential use cases for this from the perspective of both the customer and the service professional. The service industry has so many sub-par performers, so it'll be great to have a service that identifies and rewards (through identification) the good ones.

Can you disclose any other features you have planned beyond profiles and following?

stay tuned =) We have a lot of awesome product features in the pipeline that will be released in the next few weeks.

It would be really great if one could view the pertinent parts of this site (users' pages) on an iPhone, but "WHOAH THIS IS MOBILE!" is the redirect I'm getting. Sigh.

I'm having a hard time believing that this concept made it past the pitch stage. I can't even.

Yelp already has most facebook functionalities, and listings for service professionals.

You should just say 'we're competing with yelp. wish us luck'