Be a Tutor, Find a Tutor: TutorLinker

Los Angeles based TutorLinker just relaunched with a new design and functionality. They’ve created a marketplace to find tutors based on geography (including a Google maps mashup), subject matter and pricing.

This is the kind of site that I really like to review. The creators are two UCLA college students. No venture financing or big team of developers. Just two guys creating the kind of service they’d like to use.

While the design is great, there are a couple of features that could be added that would make the service easier to use. Search is currently based only on location, although each tutor in they system has filled out a detailed profile that includes subjects they would like to tutor in. Allowing search or browsing by those subjects right at the top level would make things easier.

They should also allow user ratings of tutors, which isn’t there right now. Feedback will provide prospective customers a good idea of how well this tutor has done in the past, and it will also build community participation.

One way for them to expand beyond their current walled garden is to build an API into the service as well. There are lots of parenting sites, including social networks, that may be willing to add this functionality to their sites.