As someone who likes apps, I’ve always heard about recommendation engine Where, but never had much of a desire to use it. Then this week it snapped my attention when it was bought up by ebay in an interesting expansion into mobile commerce. So I figured before the app changes I’ll check out what all the fuss is about.
On the surface, Where is a recommendation engine that uses your favorite locations to tell you where you should go next. You can check out places to eat, drink or hang out at all with a few taps. Where has many more layers though that make it a #winning app. As you can see above, you can use the Bump app to share recommendations with your friends. To those of you that haven’t used this awesome innovation, you simply bump phones together to connect and share content (often your contact when you’re too late in the evening to type out numbers).
Where encourages you to separate local businesses into two categories – those that are your favorites and those that you want to go to in the future. This to me seems to limiting – why do I have to either LOVE a place, or just want to go there? Haven’t you also been to places where you just kind of liked it? Where’s the rating system?
Regardless, Where is a powerful way to use your gastrointestinal and alcoholic interests to explore Boston further. It will certainly be interesting to see how eBay integrates into the app – specifically through their PayPal payment system.
What do you think? Is Where the next big bang or a bust?
The BU Smartphone Coalition 