Foursquare Is More of a Force to Be Reckoned With, as Its Tips Grow Faster Than Yelp’s Reviews

Should you be putting effort into Foursquare or Yelp? The answer for small businesses is simple: both. But it’s worth noting that one of those platforms is hotter than the other.

According to Fast Company, Foursquare topped 33 million user-generated tips on its location-based platform last month, which reflects a year-over-year increase of about 65 percent. Yelp beats Foursquare in terms of total number of reviews (nearly 43 million), but that number is growing at a slower pace (up 41 percent year-over-year) than Foursquare’s tips. Yelp also has 108 million users to Foursquare’s 35 million.

Austin Carr at Fast Company notes that tips and reviews are very different assets. While tips are smaller and posted in real time, reviews go more in-depth and are typically written after an experience at a venue.

According to a recent survey from Reply.com, 34.9 percent of small-business owners said they use Yelp to acquire new customers online, while 23.9 percent said they use Yelp to retain new customers online. However, 14 percent said a location-targeted would help them compete better against bigger companies for customers online, a bill that Foursquare fits.

Yelp recently acquired reservations service SeatMe, which put it in more direct competition with OpenTable.

Meanwhile, Foursquare recently expanded access to self-serve ads for small businesses.