Yelp + Facebook = Hangouts

In another stride towards social networking omnipotence, Facebook has recently welcomed Hangouts, a Yelp application which allows users to broadcast where they plan on going out, where they’ve been, and who else will be there (while driving traffic to Yelp’s growing database of user reviews). And to appeal to the more competitive scenesters, the application also allows Facebookers to publicize how many times they’ve been out recently - just in case people were wondering - and what their “favorite hangout spots” are.

Hangouts is an appropriate complement to Facebook, a site that has capitalized on a growing interest in passive socializing through “mini-feeds” of friends’ updates. Hangouts allows users to inform all those in their network of their social itineraries without directly inviting, or offending, anyone. Ideally, it also bringing people of similar tastes in nightlife spots together in a (digitally) organic fashion.

If Yelp’s lucky, its foray into Facebook-land will bring them the strong base of users similar applications like Dodgeball haven’t been able to muster. If not, looks like we’ll have to keep on meeting people the old-fashioned way.

Hangouts

Contributed by Christine Huang