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For a lot of people, the only thing that gets them through the week is the weekend. Yet, when Friday night rolls around, the hardest thing to do is decide where to spend that precious night off. While many people turn to a trusted friend for a restaurant recommendation, or a close confidant for fashion advice to find that perfect going-out outfit, other Canadians have found a new way to get an honest opinion by just surfing the web.
Thanks to two Toronto-based websites that combine the social networking aspects of Facebook with the product review capabilities of Amazon, restless Canucks can find out the best places to eat, relax and even find romance, with just a click of a mouse.
The year-old OurFaves.com and ChickAdvisor.com, which turns 2 in September, want to be the new go-to places for 20-something web surfers who not only want to read reviews about the newest restaurant in the neighbourhood, but also want to share their thoughts with like-minded people about their favourite things in the city. Like with Facebook, users can create a free profile where they can list their interests, upload a picture and talk directly to “friends,” but the main draw is the member-written reviews.
Essentially, these sites are no different than sitting around with a pal discussing the merits of that new bar down the street. Now, though, you can have that discussion with thousands of people from across the city. “People who like talking about their favourites places are passionate people,” says Candice Faktor, managing director, corporate development and innovation for Torstar Digital, the company that owns OurFaves. “They want to discuss.”
The social graph
The sites are still in their infancy — OurFaves’s 250,000 unique visitors in June, and the female-focused ChickAdvisor’s close to 60,000, fall far short of the 123.9 million unique visitors to Facebook in May — but that doesn’t mean they’re not trying to play with the big boys. Both sites are planning to feed off Facebook’s success, mainly by integrating profiles so users’ social networking information can remain the same on both sites. “We’ll make it easy for people to link to profiles,” says Ali de Bold, ChickAdvisor’s co-founder. “It’s the idea that your data should be portable and you can take it from place to place.”
“Facebook is the social graph of the web,” adds Faktor. “Off them we can build amazing recommendation logarithms. If your friends on Facebook like certain things on OurFaves that you like, we can use that info.” While they are not currently using that information, Faktor explains it could help them make recommendations to users based on friends’ picks, for example.
In the not too distant future, it will even be possible to use one profile to access ChickAdvisor, OurFaves and the countless other niche social networking sites on the web. “Social networks will be like air,” says Forrester analyst Charlene Li on her blog. “They will be anywhere and everywhere we need and want them to be.”
Online advertising as a business model
While this type of technology will be a blessing for social networking obsessed web users, it could still be awhile before anything like this hits mainstream culture. Faktor and de Bold aren’t too concerned about profile portability anyway; they have more old-school concerns to worry about right now, like making money.
Neither company would disclose how much they’re grossing, or how much they need to break even, though de Bold did say this year will be the first that ChickAdvisor ends up in the black. Part of its good fortune comes from attracting a market that more global-focused sites like MySpace have yet to tap: local business.
For $25 small companies can set up an enhanced profile on ChickAdvisor, which gives them Google Maps integration and ability to update information among other useful tools. De Bold says this option, as opposed to the more limited free profile companies can create, is being marketed toward stores with small budgets who want to get their name and brand into cyberspace. It’s especially useful for businesses that don’t have a website, she says.
Marissa Gluck, managing partner at Los Angeles-based media consulting company Radar Research, says while targeting local business could be a significant money maker, it won’t be easy to get small companies on board. “It’s very hard to sell local businesses with the idea of advertising on Internet,” she says. “You’re also dealing with tens of thousands of small advertisers which could cost a lot to sell to and to manage.”
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