Are users of some social networks fed up of being ‘bitten’, ‘poked’ and having sheep thrown at them? That’s the question put forward by the Beeb’s tech programme BBC Click this week.

According to the programme a new breed of social networks are closing in on the likes of Facebook and MySpace, offering something more than “just a glorified friend finder”.

The BBC very nicely chose to include Qype in their group of ’socially useful sites’ and yours truly even makes a brief appearance in the programme to explain a little bit about how Qype works.

The feature looks at the rise of practical, people-powered sites as well as asking the usual questions about the possible abuse of user-generated content (owners hyping up their businesses for example), and the future of data portability across different networks.

You can watch the whole programme on this page (or just read the text version if you prefer). The story also made the front age of Digg so there’s a conversation going on on that site too.

As always, let us know what you think in the comments.

Next month Qype.co.uk is breaking out of the interweb and invading the real world.

To say thanks to our dedicated band of UK Qypers we’re inviting you all to one of our favourite London boozers for the night.

There’ll be free drinks, some awesome prizes, dancing until dawn (or at least closing time), and the opportunity to amass enough blackmail material on the Qype team to last the rest of their natural born lives!

And if you’re good we may even let you near the buffet.

THE VENUE: The brilliant Coach and Horses pub just off Charing Cross Road (click the link for all the details).

THE DATE: Thursday April 3.

THE TIME: 7pm until late.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

You might have noticed over the past few days that it’s now possible to embed images in your reviews.

Previously you could only upload your pics to a place’s gallery, but now you can show off your best shots within your review just by placing the url of the image file between two exclamation points, like this:

!http://farm1.static.flickr.com/126/329059538_946fa95ccf_m.jpg!

The photo will appear in the body of your review, like this (you can see this review on the site here):

And it’s not just pictures you can add. If you feel like really pimping your review then you can put certain words in bold by surrounding them in asterisks (*like this*), put words in italics using underscores (_like this_), and link to other pages simply by posting the url (www.qype.com for example).

Happy formatting!

Here at Qype HQ we’re big believers in that old saying ‘a picture paints a thousand words’, if only because taking photos of a cool place saves a lot of wear and tear on our typing fingers.

And even if your prose is of Shakespearean quality just adding of a hastily taken, slightly blurry image taken on your phone to your review can really help communicate the awesomeness of a burger or some cheesy interior decor to your fellow Qypers.

And because we think Qype is a prettier place when it has more photos we thought we’d reward all those shutterbugs out there by giving away a sweet digital camera.

Here’s the deal: On Friday April 11th we’ll give away a 7 megapixel Fujifilm FinePix S5700 to someone who’s uploaded at least one image to Qype between now and then.

That means every time you upload an image in the next month (whether it’s a photo of a place or even a profile pic of your lovely smiling face) then you’ll increase your chance of winning the camera.

So what are you waiting for? Get snapping and cross your fingers (not both at the same time though, obviously).

Just because we introduced Qype version 3.0 a few weeks ago that doesn’t mean we’ve been sat around twiddling our thumbs and playing Scrabulous. In fact we’re always making small improvements to the site based on the feedback we get from the Qype community.

So here’s a couple of recent tweaks you may not have noticed yet.

For Qypers on the move we’d added Google Maps to our mobile site (m.qype.co.uk) so now not only can you find the best places nearby, you can get directions as well. All you have to do is select the place you want to visit and then click on the ‘Map’ link. Easy!

Since the release of the new version we’ve had a few people ask us about multiple profile pictures. So now, if you visit your My Qype page, you’ll see a link on your profile pic which allows you to upload more snaps of yourself and change your current mugshot. And don’t forget if you want to browse through all the photos you’ve uploaded to Qype, you can do that on your My Photos page.

There’s plenty of more tweaks to come, but if you’ve got any suggestions for further improvements in the meantime please send them our way or leave a comment on this post.

This weekend was a pretty exciting one for Qype in terms of publicity for the site.

On Saturday we sent a few pies to the XFM studios to mark the beginning of British Pie Week and the grateful DJs ended up inviting their listeners over to Leicester Square for a slice of free patry-encased loveliness. One of our eagle-eared users heard the programme and told us about it on the Pie Week forums (thanks vixff!).

Then, the very next day, we were featured in Rob Waugh’s internet page in the Mail on Sunday. Rob gave us a fantastic four star rating and said some lovely things about us:

“Unlike Facebook, there are no Zombies, Funwalls, SuperPokes or other pointless social “games”. Qype is focused entirely on you, your area , and what to do there… some of the user-made guides are genuinely great… Qype is easy to use and has the sort of clean layout that is the reason Facebook triumphed over MySpace.”

You can read the whole thing by clicking on the picture on the right (the article isn’t on the Mail’s website yet unfortunately).

So if you’re reading this as a result of hearing about us via XFM or the Mail then let me be the first to say hello, and thanks for popping by. We hope we’ll see a lot more of you in the future :)

If you’re stuck for ideas for who nominate in our Hidden Gem awards then you might want to take a look at this article that appeared in today’s Guardian, in which a group of food writers recommend “the best independent cafes, snack shops and delis in cities around Britain”.

As our Hidden Gem awards are all about celebrating local, independent businesses then this list might get you in the mood for nominating some of your own right here on Qype, (like the Breakfast Club, pictured above, which makes the Guardian’s list and has already been nominated in the HGs).

You can find out more about the Hidden Gems right here, or you can check out the Qype Groups for the awards here.