Yelp plans splashy debut in location-aware mobile market

Business reviews site Yelp will be focusing quite a bit on mobile features in the near future, including an upcoming location-aware iPhone app on the way, company representatives told CNET News.com Wednesday.

This will mean that iPhone users will be able to log onto the Yelp application and search for businesses and reviews of establishments close to their geographic coordinates. In other words, you will be able to look and find which sushi restaurants are within five blocks of your location--and see Yelp members' warnings on which ones might make you puke.

The application is still in development and does not have a timeline for release yet, so few concrete details are available. It'll likely rely on cell phone tower triangulation for location awareness rather than GPS; while the impending "iPhone 2.0" is widely believed to have GPS capability, but if the application uses triangulation, "Yelpers" with first-generation iPhones will be able to use the product as well.

This will be Yelp's first foray into location-aware services, which are a hot and developing niche of the social Web. Some services, like Loopt and Brightkite, focus on charting your friends on a map; others, like Buzzd and Socialight (in the U.K.) run services designed to pinpoint nearby restaurants and bars.

Yelp's entry into the location-aware market could potentially shake things up since the service already has a huge cult following in several major U.S. cities (it's approaching 3 million business reviews) and most other players are start-ups trying to build up loyal user bases. A location-aware mobile Yelp could deal a blow to newish companies like Whrrl, which offers pretty much the same kind of service.

The company has not said whether it will expand location-aware mobile services to devices beyond the iPhone, but Apple's handset is a logical starting point. Yelp, which is geared toward urban 20- and 30-somethings, pulls in a full percent of its traffic from iPhones, representatives said, and the company doesn't even operate an iPhone-specific mobile application yet. That could be due to the company's popularity in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, which happen to be (at least anecdotally) hubs of iPhone use.

Also on the agenda: international expansion, slated to come later this year. Currently, you can write a Yelp review for any business in the U.S., but not internationally. First in line is likely Canada, followed by other English-speaking countries before the site moves into translation efforts.

[Noitacol]

Just want to bring up the discussion. The following was copied from my year-old blog. These years, I browsed around about the location-based services (LBS). A more detailed explanation of LBS for mobiles I found is

http://cid-facb429f1db87808.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/ICC%202008%20LBS%20for%20Mobiles%20%7C5simplified%7C6%20R2.pdf

http://to.swang.googlepages.com/lbs


Most people believe it would be the next big thing or killer app. Quite a few others have different opinion. e.g.,

http://www.smallsurfaces.com/2008/06/do-we-need-lbs/
http://www.lewebmobile.com/2008/06/do-humans-really-need-location-based.html

Here I can possibly present one opinion from the consumer/end-user perspective, which I have posted in some other places too.

Do we need LBS so badly?

Before I really go to the details. Let me give a review of one simple concept and theory here, which are called ?Home Range Concept? and ?Traffic Pattern Theory?.

Home Range Concept. It is a concept that can be traced back to a publication in 1943 by W. H. Burt, who constructed maps delineating the spatial extent or outside boundary of an animal?s movement during the course of its everyday activities.

Traffic Pattern Theory. A people?s daily activity pattern is pretty regular, which comprises of several major events, such as school, work, home, shopping.

As I remember, a technical explanation of traffic pattern theory can be found in a report by Stefan Schonfelder, STRC 2001.

http://www.strc.ch/schoenfe.pdf

What happened here is if you are looking at the traffic pattern of a person, saying a full-time employed, 45 years, car, 3-person-household, one child, the regular activity route is so LIMITED. So, does this mean ?

[Mary7Lynn]

There?s free app and services LifeInPocket.com offeres the capability to search nearby business via GPS or address book with Yelp Reviews. It support almost every phone.

You can also one click for turn by turn navigation with voice instruction. It looks really cool and offers most iPhone features.

Free download at LifeInPocket.com