As I have recently moved into downtown Bethesda, and my girlfriend Alex has moved into Dupont Circle, we find ourselves eating out at a restaurant more often than not (even though we both love to cook). We’re always up for trying new things, so we rarely visit a restaurant more than once. For that reason, we spend a lot of time on Yelp, looking for well-recommended restaurants that we think would both suit us.
More recently, I’ve started experimenting with Thummit, now in beta. It’s done to restaurant reviews what Twitter has done to communication; simple, straight to the point. Instead of the standard five star rating system, you’ve got a thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or neutral. That’s all I really need, right? It comes down to a binary decision; do I go or do I not go? And while there is not much of a technical barrier between allowing someone to type in a few sentences or a few pages, Thummit keeps reviews to 140 characters or less. Smart. When you ask someone about a restaurant, they’ll give you a few points, not pages.
What I like the best about Thummit is the interface for it. With an SMS and Twitter interface, you don’t ever have to visit the website. More importantly, this allows you to collect your reviews while you’re at the restaurant (if only Alex would let me use my phone!), rather than trying to remember it later. They hope to have more ways of entering and retrieving reviews in the future.
It’s currently in private beta, but definitely worth checking out. Request an invite or drop me a line!
(Full Disclosure: I work at JESS3, which is helping out with social media PR for Thummit)
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