Every ‘Check Out’ Teaches Bizzy About the Places You Like and Provides You with Better Personalized Recommendations
SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 8, 2011 — Bizzy (http://www.bizzy.com), a personalized local business recommendation engine powered by people with similar tastes, today launched its mobile location-based "Check Out" feature, which lets you quickly and easily denote your sentiment about every business you visit. The sentiment you share about the business will let others know what you thought about the place and helps Bizzy give you even better recommendations for the next time you’re out.
"Most location-based apps are focused on telling your friends where you are. Now with Bizzy, you ‘Check Out’ to let your friends know how you liked it," said Gadi Shamia, Bizzy founder, president and general manager. "We’ve designed ‘Check Outs’ to let users share their opinion of a place in the same amount of time it takes to sign a credit card slip or wait for your date to get back from the bathroom. You don’t have to wait to get home to write up a review anymore."
To "Check Out" from a business, just tap the "Check Out" button on the Bizzy mobile app and tell Bizzy how you liked the place by using one of three emoticons: the "happy face :)," the "meh face :|," or the "sad face :(." The happy face means that business is fantastic and one of your favorite places; the "meh" face means it was not your favorite, but it was good enough that you’d probably go back; and the sad face means that you won’t go back and wouldn’t want that place influencing your Bizzy recommendations. In addition to the emoticon, you can also leave a tip with your "Check Out," letting future visitors know a little inside secret such as, "The creme brulee was so amazing that my date had to pinch me to make sure I wasn’t dreaming."
"Bizzy’s new ‘Check Out’ is really innovative. Most location apps are focusing on where you go. Bizzy’s focus is on how you liked where you went," said Aaron Strout, author of the upcoming book "Location-Based Services for Dummies." "I’ll keep checking in with Foursquare or Gowalla when I go out, but I’m also going to ‘Check Out’ with Bizzy to keep a record of my favorite places, let my friends know how it went and help Bizzy learn more about my tastes."
"When you ‘Check Out’ you’re teaching Bizzy about the kinds of places you like so it can recommend the next great place for you to try," explained Shamia. "Since we launched in November, we’ve collected over 140,000 favorite places from Bizzy users and we’ve produced over a million personal recommendations by asking people questions about the places they love. ‘Check Outs’ will help us build that data set and provide even better recommendations."
To get your personalized Bizzy recommendations, you can start on the web at Bizzy.com by answering a few quick questions about your favorite local businesses, or you can download the Bizzy mobile app for iPhone or Android smartphones and start "checking out" from the places you visit. Your favorites are mapped to people with similar preferences, creating a foundation for Bizzy’s recommendations. Bizzy recommends the best places for you to eat, shop and play based on the places you’ve identified as your favorites, and allows you to browse those recommendations by category based on personal match or popularity.
About Bizzy
Bizzy is a local business recommendation engine powered by people who like the same places you do. Bizzy uses your personal preferences to help you discover local businesses recommended by people with similar tastes. Bizzy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of ReachLocal (Nasdaq: RLOC). For more information and to sign up please visit http://www.bizzy.com.
For regular Bizzy updates follow us at http://www.twitter.com/bizzy
Become a Fan on Facebook at http://www.Facebook.com/bizzyfans