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Yelp on iPhone

Yelp for iPhone

What is it?

With 4.6 million Americans visiting Yelp in August 2008, this application brings “Real People. Real Reviews.” to the iPhone.

On Yelp, users review and rate places they’ve been through qualitative means (i.e. “The food here sucks.”) to create a pseudo-quantitative collective rating of the place (i.e. 3 stars). While Yelp is used first and foremost for restaurants and bars, users also submit reviews of shows they’ve seen, events, gas stations, local service stations, and anywhere else they’ve been to. Yelp’s review database is user-generated, which can lead to some content limitations.

How much does it cost?

Free.

Who is it good for?

Anyone looking for reviews or discovery of local businesses with one major caveat: If you live in a major city, the application should have you covered on reviews for restaurants and many local area venues, but cities with a smaller community of existing Yelp users could find the application’s usefulness to be marginal.

Summary

While quick and functional for those in major cities with contributing Yelp communities, limited search results (due to much of Yelp’s database being user-generated), some filtering limitations, and the inability to upload, stop Yelp’s iPhone application from being the end-all review tool for everyone’s local life. Essentially, it’s good for finding reviews if you’re in a big city, not so good if you’re not.

Keep it or Delete it?

Keep it.

While Yelp is a resource to those who just read, it is powered by those who review - something that many feel like is missing from the iPhone application, much to the chagrin of many Yelp users who have reviewed the app on the iPhone store.

While the functionality is missing, the reality is that the number of people who contribute to a site compared to those who simply read can oftentimes be less than 1%.

How can that be… You ask?

Think about YouTube, which chances are you and your friends don’t post to, but watch all the time. The same goes for Yelp.

So while some Yelp members might find the application severely lacking with an inability to contribute reviews or access their personal account information via the application, the reality is that the read-only functionality of the application will serve the general masses just fine.

As long as users are looking within a community that has plenty of Yelp users (see: West Los Angeles, pictured on left) posting reviews, they won’t notice too many gaps when it comes to restaurant reviews in particular.

Like all applications of this type, Yelp can use GPS or zipcodes to find restaurants near you or where you plan on being. This is where those unfamiliar with Yelp will find the application frustrating.

While it has many locations and local hotspots, Yelp is not a comprehensive database of businesses because of the user-generated nature of the site. Yelp does not work nearly as well at finding all gas stations and identifying closed restaurants, simply because few Yelp users (outside of the cheap ones trying to get “First to Review’s”) take the time to review them or mark them as closed, even in major areas.

Essentially, this is not a tool you use to find gas at the last second when you have .1 gallons of gas left, but it can tell you if the waiters are nice and the food is good at a local restaurant.

Another curious omission from the application is a lack of filtering by “Highest Rated” or “Most Reviewed” like many have become accustomed to on the site. Since Yelp is a site about reviews, it would make sense that there would be a filter that focuses on reviews. As a trade off, the “Open Now” filter is a fantastic way to find something that’s open on a late night or early morning.

One’s experience with the Yelp application is going to be heavily determined by location.

If you live within a vibrant Yelp community (San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, etc.), the application will be more than useful in finding places to go or avoid based on the user reviews. However, a great part about the application is that you don’t have to be a Yelp user to benefit from the contributions of others.

If you live in a smaller city, chances are the Yelp application will be significantly less functional until you or others in your community sign up on Yelp.com to build out the review database for your specific location.