Reputation Trumps Location

Last month was spent in NYC for me.  A fantastic experience of just walking around the city day after day until I a) ran into a friend or b) started walking away from NYPD humming the ‘don’t taze me brah’ theme song or c) got hungry.  I walked almost 7 miles a day passing thousands of stores but only stepping into a few.

When I indeed did get hungry, I looked for the closest place to grab a bite to eat.  In all the meals I ate, non were from one that I didn’t check out on Yelp and Foursquare.  Lots of positive tips on Foursquare got me into a place.  Same for stars on Yelp.  Bad comments on a place and I started researching for nearby places that people actually liked and took the time to rave about.

Foursquare is especially useful right now, as it is a positive reinforcement loop.  You check into a Pizza place.  That is a vote.  You check in 30 times?  30 votes.  If your my friend, I see that.  Leave a tip about something you loved?  Voting again.  You can search tips, which for a gluten free person like myself, let’s me do a search for ‘gluten free cookie’ and see a few dots on the map light up.  Yelp is less useful, as people try to influence by negative comments, where Foursquare is almost all positive.  You don’t like the place = you don’t check in again.

The location was somewhat important.  The reputation trumped though, and it never did me wrong.