While the name may be a bit unruly, TalkFavorites.me is a rating system for the best stuff near you. There are no reviews to AstroTurf, no business details to mess up, and no horribly-written screeds against unfairly-judged businesses. Instead, you vote for the best stuff in your area and then consult those lists as you look for, say, the best pizza in West Chester, Penn.
We spoke with TalkFavorites.me founder Chris Dima about his product. He describes it as “Yelp without the fuss” and the goal is to basically make top 10 lists of everything everywhere. He’s launched the site outside of Philadelphia and he’s going to try to expand it to other markets soon. You can try your own Zip code to see if anyone has voted near you.
The premise is that regular reviews sites aren’t helpful. You end up with weird tirades against a bitchy waiter rather than a real, democratic assessment of value. By reducing opinions to a single vote – Best Mojito in Scranton – you reduce much of the noise.
The site is live now and Dima hopes his idea will replace the concept of likes.
“So 1,120 people “Like” Limoncello, an Italian hotspot in my hometown, West Chester, Penn. As a disembodied absolute metric, it’s just not helpful, say, for someone who is looking for an Italian restaurant in the area. What does that number mean? What does it tell you?” he wrote on his blog. “Not much.”
“Users need comparable numbers next to one another. They need the number of “Likes” for all the available Italian restaurants in the area. Numbers like these would then be actionable. The user would gain a better understanding of what’s good.”