

Ask HN: Please review my startup. theBuzz.at - pmjoyce

The idea is straightforward.  Digg (or HN) <i>style</i> voting for local bars and restaurants, see what's popular now.<p>All vote's are upvotes, there are no stars and a vote means "I'd go here again".  Users can vote for the same place weekly.  Content is submitted by users, not pre-populated but I've integrated the Google Search API to make searching for and adding venues easier.<p>I've finally managed to get a demo out for testing - it's London only at the moment (split into 150+ neighbourhoods) and there's still lots to do.  That said, I'd be interested to get your impressions and thoughts on the idea and execution at this stage.<p>Obviously there will be a critical mass issue but right now I'm concentrating on making a product worthy of mass consumption.<p>http://www.thebuzz.at/
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nobody_nowhere
I'm a little confused as to the workflow. Here's what i did, assuming I wanted
to vote on a place I like:

1\. Enter "fernandez & wells" into the name box. Hit search. 2\. Two results
are shown. Both have what look like votes already (+4, +5 icons). But my only
action is "add this place." Where do I vote? 3\. When I click to add the
place, I'm presented with a big form, which I don't care about. I click "add
place" anyway, and after clicking a couple of times with nothing happening, i
realize it's trying to get me to select a category. I select a category
(restaurant), click add again, and get an error "invalid username or userid in
get_avatar"

So... hiccups aside, seems like a good idea. Execution-wise, streamline,
streamline, streamline.

~~~
pmjoyce
OK - this is a product of it being somewhat rushed to get _something_ out the
door.

The workflow does need to be trimmed, let me explain a little of what went on
there.

1) You entered "fernandez & wells" we check our DB, found nothing then went
off to check Google 2) The 2 results were from Google. The +4 icon is
confusing here, it's a half implemented feature. It's actually there to show
how much Karma a user would get by adding it. 3) I should make the error more
prominent. As for "invalid username or userid in get_avatar" - basically you
shouldn't have got to this screen to be able to add a venue without being
logged in. I'll make the user check early and redirect to the
login/registration screen.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
nobody_nowhere
Good luck with this.

Suggestion: hire someone to pre-populate/categorize your database with the top
500 or 1000 spots in London you want people to rate. It doesn't have to be
perfect. You can use inexpensive labor or even Amazon's mechanical turk. If
the goal of your site is to get people voting, you can improve your adoption
by lessening the focus on data entry, which will be a turn-off for most of
your potential useres.

~~~
pmjoyce
At the moment I'm steering away from the idea of pre-population. My reason is
that if I can streamline, streamline, streamline (as you rightly suggest) the
process of adding a site it it hopefully won't be too much of a burden for the
user. The very process might help venue submitters feel a greater sense of
ownership over the site content which won't be full of the excess clutter of
what _I_ deem to be 1000 top spots in London. I don't want to be one person
dictating the tone of the site to the users, only they, as a collective,
should feel totally free to do that.

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byoung2
I like it! I wish you had my city (Los Angeles). I'd suggest adding downvotes,
but instead of having upvotes and downvotes affect a single score, like
Digg/Bury, maybe have 2 scores, one for Buzz, and another for Kill, so we can
see a particular bar had, say, 20 Buzzes, and 5 Kills.

Also, do the Buzz counts wear off after a certain amount of time? I couldn't
tell if they did, but it would be useful to see that a bar had 20 Buzzes last
week, and only 10 this week.

~~~
pmjoyce
Thanks. I hope to roll out to more cities (including Los Angeles) pretty
quickly once the initial phase of ironing out kinks has passed.

The idea of displaying up and down votes is something I had thought about and
I can certainly see some of the benefits. However, it is at odds with the
driving force behind the site which was was to simplfy the criteria by which
venues are "rated". That said, if it turns out that it's something the user
base really want... well, everything is flexible :)

Buzzes don't wear off after time although the default view is "most recently
popular". I like the idea of displaying buzzes by time. I might develop on
that. Thanks.

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jasonlbaptiste
Very well done in terms of UI. I like the concept. The problem comes down to:
why will I come back on a fairly regular basis? Not sure if that is every
week, every month,etc. but it should be fairly regularly.

~~~
pmjoyce
The reason I see to return regularly, say every week, would be to check out
the places gaining traction now. This is a reasonably fast moving area, bars
open and close, go in and out of vouge on a fairly regularly.

Regualr users might go out for food or drinks on a fairly regualr basis -
whether it's an area they know and want to see if there's anything new/hot or
they're going out in a new neighbourhood - I see both as valid reaons to check
out the site.

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mailarchis
Nice concept and great implementation for an Alpha version... some suggestions

1\. I searched for Curry and got 4 restaurants. If possible, you might wanna
change the labels design on the map, they don't stand out on the map

2\. People visiting your site might also wanna search for restaurants of
specific cuisine. So you can think about changing the label name "Place Name"

3\. You can put the tag "Discover and share new places" on the top

All the best :)

~~~
pmjoyce
1\. That was a concern of mine. I think I should make them I little bigger
also.

2\. I saw the search as a way of finding a specific venue. Say you went to a
great restaurant and you wanted to buzz it, you put the place name in the
search, if it's already there you can buzz it, if it's not you can add it. If
you want to narrow down all Indian restaurants in a specific area use the
black venue category band (hover over restaurants to see the sub-categories).

3) [Edit] Do you think this strap line does an acceptable job of explaining
what the site is about?

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
mailarchis
Guess you can start with "Discover and Share Great Places" and then test it
out with some folks to whom you have not explained what the site is about

~~~
pmjoyce
True - it's better than nothing.

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jeromegn
(UX point of view comment)

Hmm, the design is inspired by www.kontain.com? It's well done though. A few
UX quirks here and there, but most of it is fine.

Maybe that nice image and copy on the login/register page should be on the
homepage when a user isn't logged in? I'm thinking it could convert more in
some way. (though the content is also good, you'd have to sacrifice some other
part of the page)

~~~
pmjoyce
Spot on, the site was inspired by Kontain.com. The actual design work was
carried out by Brighton (UK) agency <http://www.builtbybuffalo.com>.

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rodyancy
I'd be interested to see a service like this track what is happening real
time. So, imagine a user goes to a bar and texts/emails/iPhone app, whatever,
that would buzz up that local for the night. Then users could look to see what
is going on in real time. That may be what you are doing here, if so, I would
make it more clear. As it is, it seems like a review site, almost like
Urbanspoon.

~~~
pmjoyce
A mobile interaction is necessary, I agree. Without it we're left showing you
what popular in the past day/week/month/all time as we have at the moment.

~~~
olle
Yeah I think the ussage would really benefit from tailor made mobile apps.

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Kollner
I'd like to see a feature where people could at photos from those buzzed
locations. Integrate with twitter, facebook etc.

~~~
pmjoyce
Great idea - I also want to add Facebook Connect functionality to remove a
barrier to entry for signup.

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leecho0
Question, if a restaurant gets on it once, will it ever be able to get on
again?

If there's a "buzz" at a restaurant, there will be a lot of people there, and
it will be harder to find a seat. Of course, it'll be a good sign if you have
this problem, but it may be something to watch out for.

~~~
pmjoyce
If you're asking whether a restaurant can appear on the front page more than
once the answer is yes. People can vote for a place multiple times (once per
week). So if the restaurant is voted on enough it can appear near the top of
the list lots. I could do a better job of communicating what, precisely, the
list of venues represents.

------
seven
Like it. The header part is to big in my opinion. You should come up with a
nice slogan or a line to describe what your project is about.

How do you do approach new customers? What is the business model behind it?

~~~
pmjoyce
I'm having a little difficulty coming up with a tagline for the site that
isn't "It's Digg for Places". Any suggestions on this front would be hugely
appreciated. As would suggestions of strategies for approaching new customers.
It's brand new at the moment, I'm still working out some problems but once
it's ready I want to be in a position to grow reasonably quickly.

Re. the business model - I have a few ideas in mind right now, particularly in
the arena of local advertising/coupons/offers. Nothing fleshed out yet.

~~~
unohoo
buzzd.com seems to do something similar - although they focus mainly on the
mobile platform. They determine which place is 'buzzing' based on twitter
updates, direct buzzes etc for a bar/restaurant.

I think the idea has potential - A couple of suggestions that might seem
redundant since some have already been suggested above - make it more
streamlined (workflow) & integrate fb connect. Twitter integration will also
be great to buzz places automatically via Twitter. Any plans for mobiles ?
Additionally, check if you use yelp api to populate places - dont know if it
will violate their ToS, but no harm in checking.

edit: You could also add relative scores - ie, a bar/restaurant that was in
the top position has down by x percentage etc.

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dustingetz
this absolutely has to be a mobile app--the only time im ever looking for a
place to go to is when im already out and the present venue is lame. for
20-somethings, venue is rarely planned ahead of time, and we usually hit
multiple venues.

as far as venue discovery, again, its something that is gonna come up in
conversation--"oh hey let me check my iphone!" Though, I might allow you to
send me weekly spam of hot spots and their specials, correlated with your
value add. hey, that's a nice business model...

~~~
pmjoyce
_"the only time im ever looking for a place to go to is when im already out
and the present venue is lame"_

That's pretty much the exact reason that drove me to create the site. I've
been in the same situation more times than I care to remember and I couldn't
find anything to suit my requirements - that is: to narrow down a couple of
places that might be interesting in my immediate vicinity... _now_. Agreed it
needs to be mobile.

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chaosprophet
Nice idea and nice design. It would also be nice if you could show people
stuff from their own city (IP geolocation maybe?).

~~~
pmjoyce
Of course - that's the plan. We're London only for now as we work things out.
Once it's fairly stable we should be able to roll out to other cities pretty
rapidly.

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Kollner
I wanted to add a couple of nightclubs in my town (Kiev, Ukraine) but I was
limited to London?

~~~
gsmaverick
OP said it was London only at the moment while he's testing it.

