17 Jan 2010
Putting Foursquare, Blippy and Square Together
Yelp’s new check-in capabilities a la Foursquare have gotten me thinking about what’s next for location-based/social/financial transaction communications.
I’ve recently been reading a bunch about Blippy, which lets you share your purchases Twitter-style. This is in and of itself is interesting but scattershot, at least for now. Pair it with Foursquare, however, and one could see what the average meal or bar tab at a given spot is — and, ideally, which entrees are most popular and how much they are.
As it stands, you can get this information in a general way from Yelp/Zagat/MenuPages by scanning the reviews and looking at the number of $ signs, but Blippy data combined with Foursquare would be a lot more specific. Eventually you might even see that fried artichokes are a trending topic at Celeste (seriously, they’re amazing).
With Square on the way and, with it, more and more credit transactions taking place, it makes even more sense for purchase information to be tied to a location-based service.
Yelp’s new app is well-positioned to move in this direction too, and has the advantage of a large user base. However, my (admittedly biased) view is that Foursquare has the advantage of more curated — and valuable — social networks, as I argued yesterday.
Finally, I’d think that people would be more comfortable sharing their purchases at restaurants/bars since dining out is a public act, as opposed to the details of, say, a drugstore purchase.
