Q&A with Raved - socializing business discovery

Last month we checked out a social business discovery app called Raved, which takes Facebook likes from friends, and cross references them with local businesses to offer users a categorized list of shops vouched for by those they know. We had a chat with Raved CEO Henry Vogel about making the app and the particular challenges businesses face with location-based marketing.

Hi Henry, thanks for your time. Is business discovery a problem that needs to be solved?

While there are other services focused on local business discovery, we believe no one has yet leveraged one of the best sources of recommendations: your friends. And beyond discovery, storing and easily accessing those recommendations along and key place info on mobile devices where users most often need it, remains quite cumbersome.

Since time immemorial, people have turned to their friends to get trusted referrals. Everyone has various ‘go-to people’ they turn to in order to learn about great places. It could be finding a great restaurant or hotel when visiting a new location, discovering a new store with great products or special deals, or just being ‘in the know’ on what’s trendy or where to experience something special. Everyone wants to discover those “gems in the rough” and it’s usually our trusted friends and tastemakers we know who are the source. But remarkably, those recommendations aren’t really stored in one easy place today and accessing/requesting them via existing social networks or review sites is still very difficult. Requests for help in Facebook or Twitter can get quick replies, but those recommendations can just as quickly ‘get lost’ in the raging river that is the Facebook timeline or Twitter feed. And, users still have to search and fumble around, especially on their mobile devices, to find out the info about those places. Raved makes in infinitely easier to browse, request, store and access friend recommendations for great places on your mobile device.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/hXkOMFHObaI/story01.htm

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