The site seems to be designed much like Yelp, with some MySpace-specific features built in. MySpace Local features “hubs” for large cities in the US, where users can browse specific neighborhoods or drill-down to a specific type of business or cuisine. When reading reviews, users can filter to see reviews from all MySpace users or just those from friends. When a friend reviews a business, that review is pushed live to user’s “Friend Updates” (the MySpace equivalent of the Facebook News Feed).
This is the type of product that only a social network on the scale of MySpace or Facebook could really pull off, but it also highlights the vast differences in strategy for the two sites. For instance, Citysearch has already implemented Facebook Connect on its site, and those reviews are in turn pushed to Facebook’s News Feed. MySpace on the other hand is taking more of a portal approach, looking to have local reviews take place on its own site, generating more page views.
Which strategy is best? MySpace’s seems easier to monetize on the surface (and the program already has a number of sponsors, including Outback), since all of the action happens on its site. But Facebook is all about data, and by knowing which sites you use outside of its walls, they can serve up more relevant advertising in the long-term. Both approaches represent a challenge to sites like Yelp that are essentially standalone.