Local reviews site Qype has released an updated iPhone app which does something interesting and new. If users use the app to check-in to venues, or if they’ve put in some reviews, it will give automatic recommendations for venues.
These recommendations are based on your previous behaviour, such as what you’ve reviewed, check-ins, not on what your friends like. So if you like speciality coffee shops you will get those recommended to you. Qype is in several European markets now, so it can do things like recommend a bar to you in London based on the kinds of bars you like when you are in Berlin. The new app is also fully social so can see where friends have checked in to a venue.
Yelp doesn’t do this at all, so this new feature of Qype appears to better its main competitor. Notably TellMeWhere has tried this but their audience remains largely French.
However, although I can now connect my Qype profile to Facebook and Twitter and thus find my friends on those networks, I found in testing the app that it would default publish my venue reviews straight out to those networks without first asking me to opt-in to that option.
This was not cool and at least Foursquare gives me the option to publish out to Twitter, say, before I check in. I’m told Qype is planning to change that aspect to give users and option, or at least change the default to off.