Apple Integrating Yelp Check-Ins Directly into iOS 6 Maps

Even though I'm still going to likely choose Google Maps, competition is good. I use Yelp all the time and this is definitely a convenient feature

Apple should straighten yelp out as a company before investing so much in them. They try to extort advertising money from local businesses and if you don't pay them they filter all the positive reviews from your yelp listing.

apple is slowly turning iOS into a advertisement platform without the customer even really noticing it. sneaky but pretty smart from their perspective i guess

monkor said:

Even though I'm still going to likely choose Google Maps, competition is good. I use Yelp all the time and this is definitely a convenient feature

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Stupid question, but I assume iOS 6 will have the new Apple maps in addition to Google Maps as opposed to removing GM entirely or has that not been implied yet?

dwman said:

Stupid question, but I assume iOS 6 will have the new Apple maps in addition to Google Maps as opposed to removing GM entirely or has that not been implied yet?

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The general consensus is that it's a replacement, though Google have implied they will try to offer an iOS app. Personally I expect Google maps to only be available as a web link.

CrAkD said:

Apple should straighten yelp out as a company before investing so much in them. They try to extort advertising money from local businesses and if you don't pay them they filter all the positive reviews from your yelp listing.

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Yelp is a HORRIBLE INFORMATION SOURCE for Hotels. Nobody uses the information to find hotels. (Our hotel is a MAJOR BRAND in a MID-MAJOR MARKET and the Yelp site gets about 1-3 hits per week.)

WHAT'S WORSE is that Yelp is just a "dumping ground" for people looking to slam a business with a bad review. There is no response ability or problem-resolution process for businesses that want to ACTUALLY SERVE their customers.

IT'S AWFUL!

BigJayhawk said:

Yelp is a HORRIBLE INFORMATION SOURCE for Hotels. Nobody uses the information to find hotels. (Our hotel is a MAJOR BRAND in a MID-MAJOR MARKET and the Yelp site gets about 1-3 hits per week.)

WHAT'S WORSE is that Yelp is just a "dumping ground" for people looking to slam a business with a bad review. There is no response ability or problem-resolution process for businesses that want to ACTUALLY SERVE their customers.

IT'S AWFUL!

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Another issue with Yelp, TomTom, and all those third parties is that they have a spotty track record (or often no presence at all) outside of the US.

BigJayhawk said:

Yelp is a HORRIBLE INFORMATION SOURCE for Hotels. Nobody uses the information to find hotels. (Our hotel is a MAJOR BRAND in a MID-MAJOR MARKET and the Yelp site gets about 1-3 hits per week.)

WHAT'S WORSE is that Yelp is just a "dumping ground" for people looking to slam a business with a bad review. There is no response ability or problem-resolution process for businesses that want to ACTUALLY SERVE their customers.

IT'S AWFUL!

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The app store gets run the exact same way. Developers have no means of contacting people who leave reviews, or of responding in any visible way to reviews, so it's not like Apple is actually against the "dump your complaints here" style of review site.

In satisfying a few paranoid people who don't want anyone to know their email address, Apple manages to break the system for all the non-crazy people who, when they leave a review, would actually like to hear back from the developer and know what is being done to resolve their concerns. And for all the decent developers who give a crap about their users. (Most don't, admittedly. I try to make it as easy as possible for buyers and people considering buying to email me... All of my apps have "Contact the Developer" links in easy to find menus.)

monkor said:

Even though I'm still going to likely choose Google Maps, competition is good. I use Yelp all the time and this is definitely a convenient feature

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Well Google will probably issue a standalone map app but it won't be integrated in the OS like Apple's maps will or Google is now. When you click on a link or address it will by default bring up Apple's Map, not Googles. That is the difference between an app that you will have to copy and paste (a hassle) an address to (Google Maps) and an iOS embedded API like Apples Maps which will link to all programs through the iOS level API.

There isn't a default system wide choice.

a0me said:

Another issue with Yelp, TomTom, and all those third parties is that they have a spotty track record (or often no presence at all) outside of the US.

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I can see your concern. But at the same time it is impractical to ignore these companies because the US is a large market. But I am sure Apple is looking at ways it can implement similar features to those out from underneath the umbrella of TomTom and Yelp!

With millions of new users I'm assuming Yelp is about to become a lot more useful with more balanced reviews.

For a company that likes to control the user experience and likes to the deliver the entire package, Apple's recent move to integrate with other companies seems odd.

I guess they can't compete with Google in this area without help.

Thanatoast said:

With millions of new users I'm assuming Yelp is about to become a lot more useful with more balanced reviews.

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Probably not.

The biggest problem with Yelp is that they operate as an extortion racket. They will not remove bad reviews unless the business owner pays a fee to Yelp. That's how Yelp makes money.

In an "ideal" world, Yelp-like reviews would be normalized with the top ten percent and top ten percent of scores removed. This would largely eliminate a lot of fraudulent reviews (business owners getting friends to provide glowing scores, or competitors bashing their peers). A few truthful third-party reviews would be eliminated as well, but those contributors, in seeing their reviews vanish, would be discouraged from submitted additional reviews.

The other big problem is the issue of qualified reviews. Would you trust more for a review of the local sushi bars and burger joints? The restaurant critic at the local newspaper or your next door neighbors? Let's say the newspaper critic grew up in the Midwest as the son of a butcher. Let's say the neighbor to your left is a lady from Venezuela. And the neighbor on your right is a chef from Austin, TX. More reviews isn't necessarily helpful but Yelp's business needs traffic, and does much of it by getting people to interact and contribute reviews.

Yelp is more useful if you are out of town and too lazy to do research from qualified local reviewers. But Yelp users must realize that they basically asking some random person on the street. Popularity does not make a place good; McDonald's is a great example of this. Even a "quality" regional chain like In-n-Out Burgers is subject to this. For every In-n-Out location, there's likely a mom-and-pop burger joint within a couple of miles that blows doors on that In-n-Out store.

When you use Yelp, you are asking the Great Unwashed for their opinion.

Can't say I use yelp but I do love that Apple is willing to do things like this. It really improves Apple as a company to make these deals and give more freedom to the customers. They are being smart and making it so ios is really the best at everything!

BigJayhawk said:

Yelp is a HORRIBLE INFORMATION SOURCE for Hotels. Nobody uses the information to find hotels. (Our hotel is a MAJOR BRAND in a MID-MAJOR MARKET and the Yelp site gets about 1-3 hits per week.)

WHAT'S WORSE is that Yelp is just a "dumping ground" for people looking to slam a business with a bad review. There is no response ability or problem-resolution process for businesses that want to ACTUALLY SERVE their customers.

IT'S AWFUL!

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Huh? I only visit Yelp when I'm looking for something, but even I know they offer a bunch of business services, including response abilities: http://biz.yelp.com/support

I'm guessing between being wrong and using all caps you have a particular bone to pick?

bushido said:

apple is slowly turning iOS into a advertisement platform without the customer even really noticing it. sneaky but pretty smart from their perspective i guess

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Pretty much all social networking platforms are a new form of crowd sourced advertising.

*****

As for Yelp reviews. It mirrors every other review. It's not necessarily about what an individual says it's about the group or, in the cases of a single person, what a friend says.

I learned this from a movie reviewer that said "I'm not writing reviews for everyone, I'm writing reviews for people who have a similar taste in movies to me"

And all of a sudden the purpose of reviews became clear to me. Yelp makes it easy to follow the people who's reviews you actually can give weight to.

Sorry but from what I've seen of iOS6 maps, I'll stick with the Google Maps.

AppleGuesser said:

I can see your concern. But at the same time it is impractical to ignore these companies because the US is a large market. But I am sure Apple is looking at ways it can implement similar features to those out from underneath the umbrella of TomTom and Yelp!

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Well, i REALLY hope there's a way

Believe me or not, Google Maps is the best map service in Brazil, with information abou public transport, bus scheduling, perfectly integrated and has Street View. You've never visited a place before but you can pre-view it and know what it looks like or if Google's Maps are correct by using it.

The 3D Map idea is great, but Street View is simply spetacular. I mean, I wouldn't really know where a bank or something really is or how somewhere looks like by viewing from the skies... even if it's 3D.

Is iOS 6 turns out to be a mess, and Google's Maps app isn't as great as the integrated one, I will most ikely sell my iPhone and buy a cheaper Android phone..

Windows Phone 8 will use Nokia's map service, which is even worse.



And from my experience with TomTom, the maps are very imprecise with car navigation too...

cvaldes said:

When you use Yelp, you are asking the Great Unwashed for their opinion.

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Considering the "expert" reviews in newspapers or blog sites in many areas involve so many behind the scenes hand shakes, I'd rather trust the wisdom of the crowds. I almost never read a professional review that says this product is bad and not worth its price. They always find something good to balance the bad or they don't review a product to avoid damaging their relationships with the companies they depend on for free samples or trips.

I find Yelp reviews to match opinions from my friends fairly closely. For those who say Yelp is useless for hotels, well, I cannot disagree, I use TripAdvisor for that.

All the cool kids use Foursquare, Apple...

i like yelp for like reviews but i use 4square to check in a lot

BigJayhawk said:

Yelp is a HORRIBLE INFORMATION SOURCE for Hotels. Nobody uses the information to find hotels. (Our hotel is a MAJOR BRAND in a MID-MAJOR MARKET and the Yelp site gets about 1-3 hits per week.)

WHAT'S WORSE is that Yelp is just a "dumping ground" for people looking to slam a business with a bad review. There is no response ability or problem-resolution process for businesses that want to ACTUALLY SERVE their customers.

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This is just BS. Yelp is a great service, and it's helped me innumerable times both here and abroad. There's lazy and spiteful reviewers, sure. But overall people give good reviews. And businesses CAN respond to reviews. I've never used Yelp for hotel reviews, true, but mostly because there are travel-focused review sites which handle the task better.

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I thought the checkin craze was over? Very few of my friends still use Foursquare, and hardly anyone ever used Yelp's late-to-the-party checkin feature.

For me, the competitive aspect wore off quickly, and I wanted to see tie-ins with local shops based on checkins. But that never really materialized for any of the services on a wide-scale basis.

While the new Maps looks great, the one deal breaker is the lack of *intergrated* transit directions. Right now in my area, there are two different providers and Google allows near-seamless trips through both. Now if one had an app and the other didn't, well that's a problem

a0me said:

Another issue with Yelp, TomTom, and all those third parties is that they have a spotty track record (or often no presence at all) outside of the US.

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Tom Tom's headquarters is in Amsterdam.