TC50: GoodRec, a Recommendation Engine for the Undecided

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

GoodRec is a web-based system for posting and finding recommendations from your friends and the world at large. The recommendations pop up on a map either in the browser or on a phone – specifically, in this case, the iPhone.

You can take photos of the locations or items or simply add a recommendation on the fly. You can recommend and look up multiple types of things including restaurants, books, bars, and other things that your friends could recommend.

The recommendations are extremely quick to create and show up in real time. Many of the current recommendations are restaurants although some are for movies and other media as well as wine and bars and nightlife. It uses Google Maps to show recommended locations.

Sean Parker called the company part of the “Field of Dreams” delusion – the idea that if you build it, they will come. He recommended creating a Facebook system for improved distribution. GoodRec is very excited about their iPhone app.

Sadly, the site is a bit bare right now, as this screenshot of The Breakfast Club demonstrates.

GoodRec presented at TechCrunch50 during the Research and Recommendations session. You can view a video of its presentation
here
.

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