Yelp duplicated Foursquare. They built a nearly identical check-in system:
They copied Foursquare’s leaderboard, their friend notification options, their Twitter and Facebook sharing. The whole basic interface is here. It makes sense for Yelp to expand into check-ins, since this encourages more real-time venue feedback from users and turns the site into an even more compelling social network.
Boom, headshot, game over? Not quite. The really important stuff’s missing.
- Mindset. Are Yelp’s users even interested in checking in? Some of them probably are, but to even get those people using check-ins, Yelp will have to explain how this works. And the users will come in and abuse the system just as early Foursquare users (and pretty much everyone on Foursquare’s predecessor Dodgeball) did.
- Developers. Foursquare’s biggest advantage is the brains behind it. Dennis Crowley and Harry Heymann already have years of experience with venue check-in apps, and before that they were already writing essays on technology-induced social situations. They live this stuff, and they can focus on the behaviors their app encourages in a way that Yelp clearly doesn’t – witness businesses placating Yelp mobs with favors, and Yelpers abusing ratings to punish a newspaper that criticizes them. Foursquare is rife with cheating too, but the makers actually give a damn.
- The lead. Yelp just released an already outdated version of Foursquare. And they’ll need to dedicate a lot of expensive engineers to imitate the next release. At some point, Yelp could decide it’s just too much work for too little revenue. Or they could just royally screw up. Either way, soon Foursquare is releasing a new leaderboard, they already have a sophisticated badge reward system, and they have business partners giving special offers to Foursquare users. I really wonder how quickly Yelp will catch up to that last one, since they have a huge roster of venue clients but a notoriously tense relationship with many businesses.
I could list the userbase as #4, but I expect that Yelp will at least coax enough of its users that a few communities actually use Yelp to share check-ins with real friends (that is, people they truly want to come join them at venues). So the basic purpose of check-ins will be served. Still, as long as it’s more work to get a Yelp account than a Foursquare account (and I think it is, just a bit), they’ll lag.
There’s also one thing Yelp has that Foursquare doesn’t: Venue ratings. While Foursquare offers a “tip” section, it doesn’t ask for any text on the check-in page, and tips are usually shown after another user has checked in. Yelp is for deciding where to go, and Foursquare is for telling people you got there.
What I want to see from Foursquare (as I’ve said here before) is some copying of Yelp. Add a ratings system, pair it with Foursquare’s intense knowledge of whose tastes I share, and you’ve got a far better business recommendation service than Yelp could hope to be. Hell, even base it on where I already go and you’re giving me more than Yelp. Imagine it: Pandora for hanging out!
So Foursquare’s advantages mean that Yelp didn’t shut it down. It just publicly demonstrated the value of local check-ins. Now Foursquare can show partners, investors, and hiring prospects that the big guys think location is important. This is the same reason Twitter liked seeing Facebook copy its basic features. It’s the reason that cafés do better when a Starbucks moves in across the street. Yelp just expanded the market for venue check-ins, but it will lose some of those new location-aware users to the innovator, Foursquare. As long, of course, as Foursquare keeps kicking ass.
