My earlier post started my train of thought, but 24 hours lated I’ve decided:

The focus should be on recommendations, not reviews

Let me indulge myself. When we launched iBegin Toronto years ago, I not only added a reviews component, but also a Favorites option. My reasoning was simple – there is a stark difference between ‘liking’ a place and considering it a ‘favorite’. I’ve been to a ton of restaurants I would say I liked, but only a few I would ever really recommend to a friend.

Think of it as LinkedIn connections, but based purely on recommendations. Lets call it ‘LocalRecommendations.com’ (which is actually registered!). No reviews on this site. You simple toggle ‘I recommend this place’ with optional text. No rating numbers at all. When searching for a business, you end up with X of your friends recommend this place, Y of their friends recommend this place, and Z people recommend this place. It would be light, fast, and useful! Of course this is the damn chicken-egg problem – but hey, pull a second-generation social network and spam the shit out of their email contacts!

Kidding on the spam … we have space for only one MerchantCircle :)

You could then expand it – make something like our Explorer. Browse around for other people’s recommendations. Limit them to your friends (and their friends if you want). And so forth. And then extend it to support Facebook, OpenSocial, Open ID, Android, iPhone, LinkedIn, and so forth. Hell make it an open API even.

I am aware of sites like GigPark and Loladex – what I’m recommending is simpler than them (and also more exploratory). And I’m aware of the spam considerations. But still worth a try.

Reviews: A dime a dozen, often times more a story than an actual review, little trust in what other’s say, highly involved (in writing a review), can be negative (creating moderation headaches), and (worst of all) a moving target (someone’s 3 is someone else’s 5)
Recommendations: Rarely used, simple, based on your friends, low impact, implicit negative (with no recommendations), and no moving target.

Hell I actually want a site like the above (especially with connections into other APIs/platforms) that I’m willing to sell our data at half-price to see it happen. Any takers?