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"So you're the New York Times.\r\n\r\nYou have best in class local, editorial content about your home city, which happens to be one of the biggest cities in the world.\u00A0 You have a loyal, local community of readers that depend upon your advice about which bars and restaurants to go to.\u00A0 You have big reach.\u00A0 You have marketing expertise.\u00A0 You have (relatively) deep pockets.\u00A0 You're not afraid to use technology as a differentiator.\r\n\r\nAnd while you've been going about your business of delivering world class content to your readers, upstart companies like Foursquare and Yelp have come along and leveraged geolocation to offer compelling, user generated city guides in your home town.\r\n\r\nAs of today, The New York Times is fighting back.\r\n\r\nTheir recently launched geolocation app / city guide called &amp;quot;The Scoop&amp;quot; hit the app store today, and it's a pretty nice effort.\r\n\r\nHere are the primary components:\r\n\r\nThe Sifty Fifty gives you a list of the 50 best restaurants according to Sam Sifton, restaurant critic of The Times.\r\n\r\nThe Top Shelf provides a list of the best bars in the City according to Pete Wells, the dining editor of The Times.\r\n\r\nThe Events view shows you what's going on right now.\r\n\r\nAnd the &amp;quot;Only in New York&amp;quot; view, gives you a list of challenges to complete - stuff like &amp;quot;Eat Lunch with Diplomats&amp;quot; at the UN.\r\n\r\nUsers can check in, or &amp;quot;mark as done,&amp;quot; any venue, event, or challenge in the app.\r\n\r\nWhile you are able to post your check-ins to Foursquare, posting to Facebook and Twitter doesn't go through Foursquare.\r\n\r\nSo in summary, this is an app that leverages geolocation, The Times' superior editorial content, and game mechanics to create a different sort of city guide than what is offered by Foursquare or Yelp.\r\n\r\nI see this as a fascinating development.\r\n\r\nConventional wisdom says that Foursquare has already won the geolocation wars.\u00A0 But have they?\u00A0 Competing with a company with 1.5M users is not like competing against Facebook's half a billion users.\u00A0 And the New York Times has access to some top notch content about local establishments in New York that few can match.\r\n\r\nMy sense is that a lot of media companies will be watching The Scoop very carefully.\u00A0 If it goes well, expect to see more local owned and operated check in apps.\r\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/insider/2010/06/04/the-new-york-times-fights-back-against-foursquare-and-yelp/>