I don’t have the new iPhone 4S yet but I’ve had a chance to play with it and it is every bit as exciting as it looks. One thing I found interesting is how heavily Yelp, and its reviews, are integrated into Siri’s recommendations. When you ask Siri to find something nearby she will return results from Yelp focusing on user review ratings and distance.
Thanks to this integration Apple is placing a great deal of Siri’s user experience on the quality of Yelp’s reviews. For the short term that’s fine. However, placing a significant chunk of the user experience in the hands of an outside company doesn’t make sense in the long term.
A large tech company like Apple buying a content based review company isn’t a new concept: Google purchased Zagat a few months ago. With Apple’s war chest of roughly $76 billion in cash they could certainly afford to make a move in this space. By purchasing Yelp, Apple can better control the quality of Yelp’s results and potentially improve its integration into Siri’s programming.
What do you think? Does an Apple – Yelp combination make sense? Oh and if you have an iPhone 4S, why not ask Siri what she thinks? I’d be interested in knowing her thoughts too!
