It's really no secret that crowdsourced review services like Yelp and Citysearch are directly accountable for the undoing of Zagat, whose city guides once ruled within the restaurant review space. Contrary, it's proof of the web because the great leveler: Not just were any other services free, however the reviews were posted by other like-minded restaurant-goers and aggregated to create a composite score. Basically, what Yelp did was p-anonymize restaurant reviews to lend them credibility no more were they some faceless number inside a guide.
However, Zagat's joined right into a partnership with a brand new location-based discovery service known as Picksie. The service released in June, but was lately up-to-date and it is open to apple iphone customers free of charge through iTunes.
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It is a fine service that utilizes geo-location and check to locate stuff to complete in your town. For example, should you key in "Chinese food," it'll aggregate surrounding restaurants and show their whereabouts in accordance with yourself on a roadmap (using the Zagat score added on, if relevant). Picksie also offers a partnership with Fandango, then when you are thinking about finding cinemas you are able to click-through directly to purchase your movie tickets.
The interface is smooth, also it uses cutesy symbols to assist customers understand around. This is an interesting approach on Zagat's part. I discovered myself more attracted to some restaurant whether it was marked as "Zagat Ranked," though after i clicked on around, I wasn't in a position to easily navigate my method to the official review or synopsis.
The state Zagat application itself ($9.99)�rates a woeful two (from five) stars within the Application Store, with lots of user outrage as well. One user is calling the present iteration "brazen, and frankly, incompetent" while some deem it "an entire waste of cash.Inch
That is, to be honest, a bummer, especially as much more competent applications such as the voice-triggered Dragon Go! (which I have used extensively) as well as Foursquare (who had been walking up their discovery game) are used to find out where individuals are investing their hard-gained money.
Still, it's smart of Zagat to spread their wings within the mobile space, particularly in a partnership by having an application as helpful and intuitive as Picksie. Whether they'll get off the floor again, however, is yet another question entirely.
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Chris Gayomali is really a author-reporter sometimes. Find him on Twitter at @chrigz, on Facebook, or on the internet+. You may also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page as well as on Twitter at @TIME.
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