[jasonrr]

More importantly, Yelp is most useful after you've already left home. There are tons of resources on the "web" for finding reviews of various local stuff, and a web search works pretty well for finding good stuff. When you are on the move, however, web search is (generally) a real pain, and non-mobile sites are (generally) a real pain. Yelp's app really fills a need.

I used the app extensively recently while trying to find an apartment, and I didn't see anything they were doing in the app that made me think, "This has to be a native app." I think what's being confused here are the two different "webs" that exist in todays tech parlance: the first is the one that you use a web browser to access and the second is the technology stack that allows you to deliver a device independent experience using a bunch of tools that helped build the first web (plus a bunch of new stuff). With the advent of things like PhoneGap, and the native platform fragmentation that's already begun, I suspect that we're going to see more, not less, efforts going into mobile web applications.

One side note: The extra emphasis placed on iOS and iPad in the article is also telling. Sure iOS may be winning in the tablet world, and doing a damn good job in smart phone world, but Facebook has 500+ million users. Even if you throw in Android, you're not even close the total number of Facebook users just in the US. If I was the Zuck, I would be thinking about a mobile strategy that wasn't caged in by specific device/platform growth too.