Former MunchOnMe Team Launches Caviar, A Curated Seamless(techcrunch.com)

35 pointsby jwang815vor 14 Jahren3 comments

Former MunchOnMe Team Launches Caviar, A Curated Seamless

http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/20/former-munchonme-team-launches-caviar-a-curated-seamless/

3 comments

> With its focus on curation, Caviar limits its inventory to restaurants that have four stars or higher on Yelp.

Frankly, I believe that this is a security risk for companies that want to integrate with Caviar. Since this criteria is outside the control of Caviar, it is possible to game the system.

Here's a scenario: Alice opens a new swanky restaurant. A few hipsters come by and give Alice's restaurant a 4-star average on Yelp. Alice asks Caviar if she can integrate with them. Meanwhile, Bob has another restaurant that competes with Alice's. Realizing that his business is vulnerable, he buys a few negative reviews of Alice's restaurant on Yelp. Because she had few ratings to begin with, and because Yelp believes the reviews to be real, her rating drops to 3 stars. Now Caviar won't let Alice use their service.

How will Caviar prevent this scenario from happening? Why not act like Steve Jobs and say, "This restaurant can use our service because I said so?"

anandkulkarnivor 14 Jahren

Seems pretty easy. Only admit restaurants with over 100 reviews to ensure quality. Once restaurants are integrated, they stay integrated. I'm sure it's not being flipped on and off by an algorithm. Curation means someone's picking out these restaurants by hand to make sure they're great :)

jwang815vor 14 Jahren

Yes, all of our restaurant partners have hundreds if not thousands of reviews on Yelp. This will be hard to game. The only exception is the Mayo & Mustard Food Truck but they are 4.5 Stars and totally awesome.