sounds like there is room for two non-competing companies in here…

YelpSquare | Jon Steinberg

Rafer sez:

Specifically, Yelp won’t spend the goodwill with their users to make them act in a way that is unnatural on Yelp. When you force users to act in a new, inorganic way, you lose some of them. The more unnatural the act, the greater the leakage. For Foursquare, check-ins are natural. More check-ins lead to more usage, not less. Yelp’s strong, but not strong enough to win this very specific mobile, game-dynamic contest.

(via rafer)

Just one way that features become companies.

(via brycedotvc)

I’m a very big fan of Foursquare and both you gentlemen, but Yelp gets social, particularly for you tech-minded generation. They may have bigger fish to focus on, but I wouldn’t sleep on them.

(via tedr)

Other points:

• Yelp has taken HOW LONG to get to 1 million? I’m no MG Seigler, but I expect someone, right now, is graphic the growth rates of both apps and extrapolating a day in the not-too-distant future that Foursquare can overtake Yelp? Yelp got the vast majority of its app users in one fell swoop, by launching it to a pre-existing community. They won’t get that big bump again.
• Yelp is still city-by-city, yes? Which means the rural areas and small cities play very heavily in Foursquare’s favor. We can discount that, but they still make up, what? 40, 50% of the population?
• Yelp is businesses only, mainly, right? Can you check in at a park? at a playground? on the staten island ferry? An the MTA? People love that, and even if you have only one non-business you like to check in to, this puts you in the foursquare/gowalla camp
• pop up events. Crunchies, SXSW (this panel or that party), lollapalooza, etc. HUGE fun on foursquare, and totally not possible on Yelp.

(via rickwebb)