Bloomberg says Apple will include locational checkins with its new homemade Maps app, no extra app download needed. That’s actually very cool! Except it will allegedly use Yelp.
There’s a decent chance you didn’t know Yelp even offers Foursquare-style checkins, and that’s OK — nobody uses it. Yelp is still mainly a way to check thorough reviews of restaurants and other businesses, not to announce your presence there. Yelp may be trying to play the social network game, but nobody is playing along. That’s because Foursquare and Facebook are beating Yelp’s arse in this game — but that’s not enough to stop Apple from offering a new geo-feature that “will allow users to communicate through Yelp without exiting the map and opening a new app”.
Why choose the loser? Maybe Apple’s planning on buying Yelp and courted it for iOS 6 Maps as a little foreplay. Maybe Foursquare said no thank you. We don’t know. This is particularly disappointing given that Facebook and Apple are already snuggling in iOS 6 with integrated status updates and photo uploads. Why not take the integration a little further and give us a chance to swap locations with a service we’re actually plugged into?
Nobody will make you use Yelp, but this is a bummer of a missed opportunity, if true. [Bloomberg]