Filter Your Deals With The Yipit iPhone App
by Lenny Liang
November 21, 2011
From Groupon to Living Social, from Tippr to Yelp, there are many services (and apps associated with those services), which offer daily deals. The recent release of the Yipit iPhone app begs the question: What differentiates Yipit from the plethora of other daily deal sites out there? For one thing, Yipit is not so much a daily deals site, as it is a daily deals aggregator. It collects deals from over 750 services, including Groupon, Living Social, Tippr, and Yelp, and then filters them based on user location and preferences. The theory is that it's better to receive deals from a single site, rather than wasting time scouring multiple sources.
When using the Yipit app for the first time, it asks for an email address and a city. Next, it lists a bunch of categories, and asks you to choose the categories you're most interested in. Yipit's defining characteristic is that it can be customized to only send you deals from the categories you selected.
While Yipit is a great service with a great concept, it's not quite ready to replace some of the standalone deals apps on my iPhone. Although it aggregates deals from sites like Groupon and Yelp, it doesn't send me all the deals listed on those services. For example, when I looked for deals near me in Yipit, I didn't find anything interesting. However, when I looked for local deals in the Yelp app, I immediately found deals for three places that I frequent, including a sweet $25 for $50 certificate at my favorite guitar retailer (which I immediately purchased). In its list of categories, Yipit didn't even list musical instruments as a category I could select; I would have missed this awesome deal if I had relied exclusively on Yipit. Yipit's location options also still need improvement. I live in a suburb surrounding a major metropolitan city. Yipit only listed the city as a selectable option, while Groupon also listed my specific county, thus yielding more applicable results. Yipit purports to be a one stop shop for daily deals. It will certainly be a stop for me, but not the only one, at least not yet. Yipit Deals - Daily Deals, Sales and Coupons is available in the App Store now - free of charge.
