Last week I was scrolling through the Notifications feed on Facebook’s iOS app and was surprised to see the above “Nearby Places for Breakfast” list showing 3 restaurants in the area with their hours, rating, price, etc. Hitting the “see more” link brings up a full list of nearby restaurants that looks just slightly Yelp-ish:
This screenshot was taken at 4:14pm so now instead of showing “Nearby Places for Breakfast” I get “Nearby Places to Eat”. Earlier in the day I would have seen “Nearby Places for Lunch”. It’s simple but gets the job done.
There’s nothing particularly social about these listings other than the ratings, and it’s a relatively buried feature in the Notifications screen. I had to blow through multiple Notifications, Friends’ Birthdays, Trending and News Shared Locally before seeing this list, but I think the initial view of the Notifications screen has grown quite stale. I imagine this is a step towards bringing these content sections more to the front, or perhaps even breaking them off as a separate app similar to what happened to Messenger. I imagine a Facebook Local mobile app that had similar functionality to Yelp would be an instant hit.
It’s getting interesting out there folks, as usual…
6 Response Comments
Eh, I’m not sure it would be an instant hit if they did a spinoff app, but a local screen in the main app would work. Especially if they could make contextual suggestions based on your social activity without being super creepy about it.
As it’s own app it would seem just as useful as Yelp but with deeper FB connections (e.g. Messenger). I think it would kill Yelp in a week.
If they did it right, it could. But Facebook doesn’t have a stellar record when it comes to mobile apps. Plus I think Yelp’s existing review quantity gives them a big head start that people tend to gloss over.
Not so sure about that anymore http://www.connectivity.com/blog/2015/02/blog-facebook-reviews/
Interresting.
Havnt seen it here in Denmark yet, but sure it will be here soon if they are testing it somewhere else 🙂
After reading into Yelp v. Facebook review market share & demographics to a totally unhealthy degree… I think you really might be onto something here.
I still think that they’re better off keeping everything in a single app rather than making a spinoff app, but I totally agree that Facebook would probably crush Yelp either way. And quickly.