Yelp for iPhone Adds Foursquare-Like Badges and Royalty Status

The new iteration of Yelp’s iPhone app isn’t live just yet, but a company blog post gives a window into what’s coming very soon: badges, and a hierarchy of “royalty” that lets you “rule” venues, neighborhoods, and even cities.

The royalty feature is much akin to Foursquare’s (Foursquare) mayorship feature, and lets Yelp (Yelp) users with the most checkins become the “Duke” or “Duchess” of a particular venue. Yelp goes a step further with the hierarchy, however, offering users with most Dukedoms in a particular neighborhood to be named the “Baron” and even a “King” to be crowned for most Dukedoms in an entire city.

The company itself acknowledges in the blog post that “we’re not the first ones to offer checkins,” but that adding these features “furthers Yelp’s mission of connecting people with and supporting great local businesses.” Yelp also provides some statistics behind why they’re investing in new mobile features: a full 27% of all searches on the review site come from their iPhone app.

Yelp has submitted this 5th major iteration of its app for Apple’s smartphone, which should become available in the App Store (App Store) soon. The company also notes that Android (Android) owners won’t have long to wait either until the new functionality hits the Yelp client on that platform; we got a sneak peek of what Android users have to look forward to at Google (Google) I/O.

It may be derivative at this point, but it nevertheless stands to add a fun element to the process of checking in to locations. The addition of higher order titles in the royalty hierarchy for being the most active in your neighborhood or city are an interesting new spin on the concept as well. What do you think of Yelp’s move into the game mechanics territory of location services that Foursquare earlier blazed?

GQ’s Men of the Year Issue on iPad: 365 Copies Sold

GQ, one of the first magazine titles to appear on the iPad, has sold 365 copies of its December 2009 Men of the Year issue, according to publisher Pete Hunsinger.

The issue was priced at $2.99 per download — $2 less than the newsstand price — for a grand total of $1,091.35 in sales. Somewhat surprisingly, GQ appears to be pleased with this figure.

“This costs us nothing extra: no printing or postage,” says Hunsinger. “Everything is profit, and I look forward to the time when iPad issue sales become a major component to our circulation.”

It seems developer fees did not enter into his cost calculations.

On the bright side, sales for the iPhone and iPod touch version is steadily increasing, according to the iTunes store [iTunes link]. GQ’s latest May 2010 issue for the iPhone and iPod touch is the best-selling in the store right now, suggesting that the magazine is developing a solid base of repeat buyers.

It’s hard to put these numbers in context, as little data about iPad app sales has been released thus far. A month ago, ABC announced that its app has been downloaded more than 200,000 times, and earlier this month Rupert Murdoch revealed that the WSJ app has roughly 64,000 subscribers. Both of these apps, however, are free.

Although we need more data to make an accurate assessment, one thing seems certain — the iPad is not the savior certain major publishers had hoped it would be — at least not yet. Nevertheless, it may yet prove a profitable distribution platform for magazines in addition to other platforms, like Facebook.

Publisher Condé Nast is forging ahead with the development of iPad versions of its other popular titles. Vanity Fair appeared in the iTunes catalog this week, and WIRED is slated to launch this summer.