Of Yelp and Foursquare
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I have not been a big fan of foursquare. I think Yelp also has its issues. But when I am hungry and in a place where either 1. I am sick of the regular place or 2. Lost; then I turn to Yelp. It hasnt disappointed so far and the "Open Now" filter has been a blessing. Foursquare wants to muscle in on this territory. Fair enough, so do a lot of companies and it is a lucrative market. After all it does not get any more contextual than where you physically are present at this very moment. So what are we looking for and where are the main issues that we want to tackle?
1. Obsolescence - Miyaki was a frightfully popular place in downtown Palo Alto, it closed. Yelp did not know about it immediately and had some lead time before this information percolated through its systems. When we are making a catalog, data goes stale and keeping that data fresh becomes a dirty job with no proven approach.
Yelp is still very much a catalog. Foursquare on the other hand uses check-ins, actual people checking in to a place. If the place ceased to exist people would stop checking in, the firehose would dry up.
2. Answers - An aggregate review is a very poor measure of a place. I went to the Grand last weekend and wrote a review which was buried somewhere so deep that even I cant find it. I want to do X on a Saturday night with Y number of friends. What are the chances that I have a good time? You would have to sift through a ton of rubbish to get what you would want. Somehow search does not seem to be the right answer here, it needs analytics in addition to search and sort. A social conversation is more likely to answer a question than greet you with a wall of text.
3. Engagement - So you read a review on Yelp and go to that place which has a 4 star review. Or you are deciding between two equally cool nightclubs. You know what would sweeten the deal? A discount, a deal, pre-booking - absolutely anything that you can throw at an interested customer is better than not knowing what they are doing with your information. Yelp has a check-in system which I am not sure how many people use but Foursquare was built from the ground up for people going into places.
So, hand the fight to Foursquare and bet the future on them? Not yet. The network needs more active users in more diverse places to gain traction and actually be useful. It needs to be the de facto standard for reviews and it needs to balance the deals going out and whoring out your customers. Its delicate, its exciting and over the course of the next year, there is no other company better equipped to upstage Yelp.
1. Obsolescence - Miyaki was a frightfully popular place in downtown Palo Alto, it closed. Yelp did not know about it immediately and had some lead time before this information percolated through its systems. When we are making a catalog, data goes stale and keeping that data fresh becomes a dirty job with no proven approach.
Yelp is still very much a catalog. Foursquare on the other hand uses check-ins, actual people checking in to a place. If the place ceased to exist people would stop checking in, the firehose would dry up.
2. Answers - An aggregate review is a very poor measure of a place. I went to the Grand last weekend and wrote a review which was buried somewhere so deep that even I cant find it. I want to do X on a Saturday night with Y number of friends. What are the chances that I have a good time? You would have to sift through a ton of rubbish to get what you would want. Somehow search does not seem to be the right answer here, it needs analytics in addition to search and sort. A social conversation is more likely to answer a question than greet you with a wall of text.
3. Engagement - So you read a review on Yelp and go to that place which has a 4 star review. Or you are deciding between two equally cool nightclubs. You know what would sweeten the deal? A discount, a deal, pre-booking - absolutely anything that you can throw at an interested customer is better than not knowing what they are doing with your information. Yelp has a check-in system which I am not sure how many people use but Foursquare was built from the ground up for people going into places.
So, hand the fight to Foursquare and bet the future on them? Not yet. The network needs more active users in more diverse places to gain traction and actually be useful. It needs to be the de facto standard for reviews and it needs to balance the deals going out and whoring out your customers. Its delicate, its exciting and over the course of the next year, there is no other company better equipped to upstage Yelp.
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