Intends to cut through written reviews

Digg.com founder Kevin Rose has demonstrated a forthcoming iPhone app called Oink, expected to be released shortly, that up-ends the model for finding out about local businesses by using crowd-sourced ratings of "things" and geo-location to develop the shortest possible answer to the question "where is the best (whatever) near me?" While the ratings would be dominated by things like food and drink, the app can rank just about anything multiple people want to comment on.

Oink de-emphasizes the idea that users need to write a review (though they can if they want to), and instead goes for a "thumbs up/down/side" approach, so instead of commenting on a restaurant generally, users just rate a particular item (like the tuna belly sushi as an example) which is then compiled along with other people's rating of the same item. Over time, this leads to crowd-sourced recommendations on the best tuna belly sushi nearby or in a specific radius.

Rose, demonstrating the app at today's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, criticized services like Google Maps for failing to tell users anything about the inside of a business, and review sites like Yelp for making the key information too difficult to find, requiring reading "pages" of reviews to get a sense of whether, for example, the coffee was any good at a given restaurant. Oink's use of "things" as objects to be rated very simply (with additional comments attached if desired) gives users the top "things" within a certain distance, whether it's the best cupcakes or the best place to watch the sunset or the best rollercoaster.

The app connects to social media like Facebook and Twitter and can show reviews written by a user's friends on either service. As the Oink user contributes more ratings and comments, they get rewarded by "levelling up," not unlike Foursquare's rankings of users who frequently "check in." Similarly, active users may eventually be rewarded with special offers or discounts from frequented businesses.

Oink is the first app to be produced from Rose's post-Digg startup Milk, a mobile app development company that uses a philosophy of quick acceptance to determine if apps receive further development. Apps that fail to catch on quickly are abandoned in favor of apps whose initial concept finds obvious appeal early on, thus allowing the company to use its sparse resources to maximum effect. [via BusinessInsider]

by MacNN Staff