The answers came back fast and angry, almost all of them pointing us to Katana-ya. Once there, I turned on Foursquare to log my location (aka "check in") with the service and, as predicted, found some great tips on what to order. And while the soup I ended up with has not done my salt intake any good, it sure lived up to my Foursquare-induced expectancies.
Like Liz, once would have turned to Yelp to make such a call. My Twitter + Foursquare experience, in contrast, was faster and, as significantly, "friendlier" as it concerned folk in my social graph (it is important, for the sake of our virtual relationships, to keep the fidelity of their messages high). And it all occurred in near-real time. This near-real-time interaction and its outcomemakes me question whether older services like Yelp have a future. The booming popularity of smart phones like the iPhone (AAPL) and BlackBerry (RIMM) are influencing our behaviour, making access to info more movable. As importantly, just about omnipresent wireless connectivity is influencing how we seek and consume information and boosting interest in (if not main line adoption of) real-time social environments like Foursquare and Twitter. When a service is allotted a time value, its DNA goes through a mutation. In this new, always-connected world, spontaneity is going to be a very important feature of successful applications, and Yelp has not got it.
Yelp is an excellent place for leaving reviews and always will be, but like many Web services of yore, it was made with a fixed connection in mind. I speculate how many corporations will find themselves on the sidelines as this shift toward a more dynamic, interactive and immersive Web picks up steam.
