Yelp Mobile today announced the release of a mobile dashboard for businesses owners through their weekly newsletter feature. However, it wasn’t until Foursquare mobile made their checkin reports available to their users through their Foursquare mobile app that Yelp followed suit on the mobile bi front. Yelp entered the mobile market early on in 2006, but it wasn’t until late 2009 that they covered the entire spectrum of mobile providers, with their Yelp mobile apps. Early this year, they launched the check-in feature for all mobile users. Yelp’s mobile dashboard captures some rather interesting and “appy” metrics, which are not just tied to the hits on the business’s link, but also to the mobile phone calls and the google maps features that are tied-in with the Yelp mobile app:-

• Number of times their business is viewed via a Yelp mobile app
• How many calls were made to their business via a Yelp mobile app
• Directions to their business requested via a Yelp mobile app
• Check-ins

Yelp will soon be releasing these metrics as an add-on tool with their mobile app. What’s interesting to note is the growing demand for intelligence from business owners, not just information. Most social sites and social directories need to gear towards turning their massive warehouse of information into business intelligence in people’s pockets - accessible, simple to decipher, intuitive and intelligent.

What companies like Yelp or Foursquare, however “social” they get, may not do is this: to make these metrics more “social” or let consumers dabble with their own metrics. They will get there someday, but not just yet. Till such time, we’re always around when someone “yelps!”.