If you are like most of my friends you tried Foursquare and gave up on it. Even loyal fans who live by it may have been a little furious with the transition to Swarm.

I’ll admit I’m still a little confused. But when companies including Pinterest, and Uber rely on Foursquare’s Map System they must be doing something right.

The constant battle for Mayorship was fun but I knew there had to be more. This is when I discovered the Foursquare Time Machine, a partnership between Samsung and Foursquare that creates a tremendous visual representation of where you have checked in at.

In addition to time machine Foursquare gives you the ability to export KML Data allowing for the creating of amazing heat-maps and travel maps without much work. This Sold Me.

Now the much harder feat, convincing my friends to stop using Yelp and get their Foursquare game on point. I mean everything is better when shared with friends, don’t you peeps want some Klout points for your tips and photos?

Meh?

Foursquare vs Yelp

They say if you have haters you must be doing something right. But after a recent ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Yelp is legally allowed to manipulate its ratings for money. And the haters have multiplied and found each other. Doesn’t this defeat the entire purpose of a peer to peer review system?

Prior to this the company has been accused of extortion and numerous Facebook Groups have propped up expressing their disgust with Yelp’s rating system. Many businesses claiming to have legitimate reviews that never surface because they refuse to advertise with Yelp.

The article fired up a Yelp Reddit Discussion with over 2,000 comments.

Valued at nearly $6 Billion it’s unlikely that Yelp will see much impact from this negative publicity unless us as users decide to stop using the service.

I already closed my account.

I am just one of a few who chose to delete their personal Yelp Accounts, though their CEO Jeremy Stoppelman defends Yelp’s advertising policies on Reddit.

From my experience creating companies on Foursquare is a cinch compared to the tedious process Yelp puts you through. None of my reviews or tips have ever been filtered and their mobile experience is far superior. My favorite thing about is is it allows you to open directions in Google Maps rather than resorting to the default Apple Maps which never fails to take you to the wrong place.

Whenever I am in a new neighborhood I let Foursquare pick my my dinner spot and it rarely disappoints.

Join me on Foursquare

Comments

comments

Google+ Comments