We hinted last week that WHERE was about to release more social features on its mobile app, and last night the updates hit the app store.
Dubbed Perfect Places, WHERE now recommends places two friends should go based on the venues they have indicated as ‘faves’ within the app. And thanks to a partnership with California-based Bump — a company with technology that allows iOS and Android owners to exchange information simply by ‘bumping’ their phones together — the feature can be used even if you’re not friends with someone on WHERE.
“There’s been tremendous excitement around location-based social networking and with Perfect Places, WHERE is delivering a truly social experience to users,” said CEO Walt Doyle in the press release. “We’re taking local recommendations to the next level and are well on our way to owning the pre check-in space.”
How does Perfect Places work? By connecting with Facebook, WHERE connects you with your Facebook friends within the WHERE app. You can visit their profiles to see the places they have marked as ‘faves’ and places they have indicated wanting to go. With the new Perfect Places social feature, WHERE now serves recommendations on your friends profile on where the two of you should go based on your tastes. Even if you are not friends with someone on WHERE (or want to quickly get recommendations instead of visiting someone’s profile), you can use the Bump feature within the app to get served recommendations by tapping your phones together.
How well does Perfect Places work? My colleague faved a handful of bar food venues, and I faved more upscale restaurants. We bumped, and were served recommendations to eat at Fajitas & Ritas or Finale. Not too shabby given how different our tastes were!
“We’ve all been part of the endless back and forth with friends trying to pick someplace to go,” said Nataly Kogan, WHERE VP of Consumer Experience. “With Perfect Places, we’re helping our users get to a place they’ll love faster and eliminating headaches along the way. WHERE is encouraging people to get out into the world, go places, and bring friends.”
The company is also using the core recommendation and relevancy engine behind Perfect Places to create visual ‘PlaceGraphs,’ which the company announced last week on their blog. PlaceGraphs are pulled from 18 months worth of data around the relationships between places. You can let your mind go wild with the possibilities of PlaceGraphs on both the merchant and user side — like understanding that a good portion of your customers come from the museum across the way on Sundays, or on the user side what locations you’re most apt to like if you’re in a new city simply based on your past preferences. PlaceGraph is something we’re bound to hear more about given WHERE’s recent hires and move into merchant services, as we discussed with the company’s CMO Dan Gilmartin in an interview late last week.
“WHERE is shaping the future of local discovery,” Doyle stated. “We’re innovating at breakneck speed and will continue to leverage our proprietary technology to solve real world problems faced by millions of people everyday.”
What do you think about Perfect Places? Can you see yourself using the Bump feature?
