My pitch is ill-defined and I realize now how similar it must seem to Yelp. However, I would like to elaborate on this point that you made about "slow growth" with a question:
Would Facebook be as popular if anyone could create anyone else's page? They would upload basic information - maybe a picture or two, a few interests, add a few friends, hardly ever write in the blog.
When the person writing content for these pages has a personal investment in the business or venue, the page becomes much more vibrant. Users on Yelp are given points for adding and reviewing places, but the number of pictures they upload, for example, is a non-factor in their user ranking.
Thus, I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this will slow growth.
I'm planning on starting with a small and well-defined geographic reach - say, one small area like a city or a state. Once that user base is satisfied, then I'll work to expand the application's reach.
One more thing, though - I would not be quick to call the profile creation on this web application "burdensome." Most venues, including several branches of a national chain, have difficulty reaching their customer base. The chain "Chili's" for example, has a Web site for their national chain, but few if any (I couldn't find any on a recent search) of their individual venues have Web sites. That means there's very little interchange between the consumer and the venue.
This web application was initially created so that people could not only organize their places, but shape them to some extent. If enough people complain in reviews of an individual Chili's venue that the cash registers are understaffed, that venue will take notice.
I want to organize the world. I don't want to organize the world's information - as Google does, but simply the places and venues that make up our world - amusement parks and museums and baseball fields and movie theaters. I want a user to be able to go onto this web application and find out where the best skate park within twenty miles of his or her new house in Portland, ME is. I want a user to be able to come back from a vacation and create a list of the places where they went. I want to make the world more active, taking users away from their computers and into the thick of things.
contact me at [email protected] if you're interested in helping to develop this web application:
I wanted to create a site for wanderlusts - people who want to use the internet to find exciting places to see and things to do. Contact me if you're interested in seeing some mock-ups.If it's not overly apparent, I haven't refined my pitch yet.
Just to clarify things, I've been involved over the past six months in designing a web application. I want desperately to bring the idea to conception, but the process of seeking out others with technical expertise seems fairly aimless.
Would Facebook be as popular if anyone could create anyone else's page? They would upload basic information - maybe a picture or two, a few interests, add a few friends, hardly ever write in the blog.
When the person writing content for these pages has a personal investment in the business or venue, the page becomes much more vibrant. Users on Yelp are given points for adding and reviewing places, but the number of pictures they upload, for example, is a non-factor in their user ranking.
Thus, I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this will slow growth.
I'm planning on starting with a small and well-defined geographic reach - say, one small area like a city or a state. Once that user base is satisfied, then I'll work to expand the application's reach.
One more thing, though - I would not be quick to call the profile creation on this web application "burdensome." Most venues, including several branches of a national chain, have difficulty reaching their customer base. The chain "Chili's" for example, has a Web site for their national chain, but few if any (I couldn't find any on a recent search) of their individual venues have Web sites. That means there's very little interchange between the consumer and the venue.
This web application was initially created so that people could not only organize their places, but shape them to some extent. If enough people complain in reviews of an individual Chili's venue that the cash registers are understaffed, that venue will take notice.