Checking in

Last Friday Yelp released an updated version of their iPhone app that could spell trouble for Foursquare and Gowalla. The biggest new feature for Yelp users: the ability to check-in.

I've been playing around with a bunch of geolocation apps recently, including Yelp and Foursquare, and so far each of them has felt like it was lacking one thing or another. I was actually compiling a set of notes for a future article about the features I would like to see in an ideal geolocation app. Here are some of those notes:

Ability to check in at venues (like Foursquare). At each venue you should be able to pull up information (like Yelp or Wikitude). You should also be able to see relevant tweets about the venue, and then be able to expand that out to see relevant tweets about the area. Friends list should come from an established social networking site like Facebook or Twitter.

The new Yelp app has a lot of my desired features rolled into it, so in my book its emerging as one of the top contenders. The check-in and gaming features were some of the cool things about Foursquare and Gowalla, but that's not too hard to copy since Yelp and MyTown now have something similar built in. I think the success of these services lies in the the size of the user base, and right now Yelp has a lot more users than Foursquare and Gowalla. (Yelp has 1.25 million users, MyTown has 500,000 users and Foursquare has 150,000 users.) On top of that Yelp also has a large database of user generated content and reviews about locations. No wonder Google just recently tried to buy them out. Of course, the real question is when will Facebook enter this space. With its massive installed user base Facebook could quickly crush the competition if it wanted to.

Pete Cashmore said 2010 would be the year of Foursquare, and Time just featured Foursquare in its magazine, but if Foursquare doesn't step it up soon it could quickly be surpassed by its rivals. Location will be big in 2010, that's for certain, I'm just not sure if Foursquare will be the one leading the charge.