Well, maybe. Depending on your definition of "smarter."

For example, does it make me smarter to know that New England Patriots fans on the Wisdom network like Narragansett Beer and New York Giants fans prefer Hennessy? Or that fans of both teams prefer Dunkin Donuts? And why is Wisdom still teasing its analysis of Super Bowl fans nearly a full-week after the game?

The U.S. Election breakdown is slightly more telling. Based on "likes" of candidates on Facebook in the last 12 months, it shows a handsome U.S. map showing which states favor which candidates, then shows the demographic makeup of each candidate's followers (in other words, the same information found in almost any decent political poll).

You can also drill down and look at your friends. You can see who has posted on Facebook the most in the past 30 days, the average number of words they used in each post and other trivia.I now know that in the past 30 days Maya Angelou and David Sedaris were the most popular authors among my friends, and U2 and Johnny Cash were the most popular musicians. Nine of my friends have made a combined 27 trips to Fenway Park, and one of my friends has been to the same hospital six times (whoever it is, I hope everything is okay).

I can also look at whom I interact with most. There are loads of other data, but not as much as you'd think: I can generally check every chart and figure on Wisdom within five or 10 minutes. And even as the network increases in size, not much changes on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.

Among other things, Wisdom lets you check where your Facebook friends have been checking in to find places you may want to go to.

Wisdom gives you a chance to do some very limited number crunching of your own, but not much. The design is beautiful, and it seems somewhat addictive the first time you play around with it, but then you realize there's not much you can do with the data aside from look at it.

And that's the problem: Every time I finish scanning through Wisdom, I'm left with that "Now what?" feeling we get when we don't really know what else to do with an app. The data is interesting, but there's not much I can do with it: I can't download it, I can't even access it from my desktop, making it harder to crunch.

Wisdom has some recommendations on how to use the app, including finding places to go when traveling and finding out what's popular. I have loads of other apps that do all of the things Wisdom claims to be able to do, and, since they're focused (finding the best place to eat, keeping me up-to-date on news and trends), the information in those apps comes off as being far more manageable than the artfully-presented glut I get in Wisdom.

Think about your average, smartphone-enabled visit to a new restaurant: You sit down, take a gander at the menu and quickly pull out your phone to look up the latest Foursquare tips and Yelp reviews. Some are novels of glowing hyperbole while others lament the irritable waitress and denounce the spot as the diner on the seventh level of hell. Either way, you often find yourself overwhelmed and more confused than when you started out.

Loopt, the mobile location tracking app and social network, announced today a new feature called Loopt Qs, "a fun, really social way to get bite-sized insider info and share your own opinions about a local place."

Loopt announced the new feature today on stage at the location-centric Where 2.0 conference. Loopt Qs offers real-time answers to common questions about locations around you - venues, restaurants, bars, and other locations. Is there a long line? What's the best happy hour special here? Is the WiFi fast enough to work?

"Most of the time, reviews are about a place you're really excited about or someplace that really frustrated you," explains the company in a demo video. "The reality is, most places are worth going to. [...] By asking super specific questions that are quick and easy to answer, we capture a lot of the information that gets lost in the shuffle and the fact that it's constantly being updated in real-time makes it sort of a radar for your city."

We've seen this similar functionality in another app called Localmind, which debuted at this year's SXSW conference. With Localmind, users who check in to locations using an LBS service like Foursquare sign up to receive questions about those places. Other Localmind users can then see that there is someone checked-in and ask them a question. It's a one-on-one interaction.

Loopt Qs differs primarily in that it takes a collection of answers from many users and presents them in a graph, giving a simple, quick aggregate of answers. Are portions at this restaurant tiny, just right, or really large? Why take just one answer (potentially from a very large, hungry individual) when you can look at a bar graph of answers and see the most popular answer? This is Loopt's approach with Qs.

Loopt Qs will go live "very soon," with San Franciscans getting first crack and other cities following. If you download the latest version now, the app will notify you when the new feature goes live.

Rich snippets was announced in May last year and began to be seen in results around October. At the SemTech panel today, Google's Pravir Gupta noted that rich snippets impressions have grown four-fold globally since October 2009, with a two-fold increase on the US/English Web. Rich snippets is available in more than 40 languages.

Gupta told the SemTech audience that there are now more than 50 reviews sites using rich snippets, for example sites that offer restaurant reviews. Also there has been uptake on social networking sites, like Facebook and LinkedIn.

The most common use cases are events (which was added in January) and recipe formats. Google is adding support for more formats, such as video, local businesses and shopping.

Google is using structured data open standards such as microformats and RDFa to power the rich snippets feature. As the below chart shows, microformats is more common than RDFa for this feature.

Google spent a good deal of today's panel continuing its drive to get webmasters to adopt rich snippets. It has a tool called the Rich Snippets Testing Tool, which helps publishers utilize rich snippets.

Finally, Kavi Goel from Google talked about how Google can accelerate growth of the ecosystem, noting that less than 5% of webpages currently have semantic markup. Google wants to see this rise to 50% or more. It is looking for critical mass, which includes adding more formats and encouraging more "beneficial peer pressure" for companies to support rich snippets. Goel cited restaurant review sites as an example - it's not just Yelp which supports it, but other restaurant review services too.

Rich snippets is an example of how the Semantic Web is being adopted by large and powerful Internet companies, so it's encouraging to see that Google is pushing for rapid adoption.

Restaurants, Yelp said on its blog, make up 29% of its reviews. The partnership seems strategically smart.

Integration of food, reviews and reservations is commonsensical enough that this not an isolated incident, though it may be the most popular site to do it. The New York Times pointed out that Urban Spoon has created a reservation app called RezBook.

A customer-friendly move like this might do something to restore some of Yelp's credibility. Its filtering system, which placed the most "trustworthy" reviews at the top of a company's listings created a lot of suspicion and resulted in accusations of extortion.

I swear, this isn't a bad joke. It's a very real site, ChurchRater, and it allows anyone with an Internet connection to identify and review church services around the world. Is the site inspiring frank conversations about worship and religion, as its creators intended? Is it allowing sometimes closed or cliqueish communities to see how they appear to outsiders? Or does it, as some users wrote, "trivialize the deep dimensions of spiritual experiences" and "bolster the notion that church is a consumer-oriented proposition"?

The website now allows any user to essentially replicate that feedback process.

Here's how it works: Users create a profile (what, no Facebook Connect option?) and then have the options of searching for churches, reading reviews and posting reviews and ratings of their own. Churches can also request to be rated, in which case a reviewer is hired and sent to review that church.

Right now, only Christian denominations are included on the site (Catholic and Protestant); the co-founders have stated they do not intend to add mosques, synagogues or other places of worship to their system. And most of the reviews are for churches inside the U.S. Still, if you've ever had the unique experience of living in or around any of the American Protestant subcultures, you know there's some darn good fodder for reviews there.

Many of the churches in the site's database remain unreviewed. The review threads that exist, however, range from informative to entertaining. One well-known megachurch was criticized for its emphasis on showmanship. Another large church was given a terrible review for its unwelcoming congregation and self-important preacher. One pastor got smacked down for giving his own church a five-star rating.

As interesting and even useful as such reviews can be, however, some of the site's users take umbrage at its purpose and execution.

"We live in a world where 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water, over three billion people live in poverty, and children of God are sold into slavery; we have no time to waste rating 'Sunday shows,'" one wrote.

"By providing such an open forum," wrote another, "dirty laundry can be aired (in fact, IS aired) with no means of proving its truthfulness; as such, you become accessories, in all likelihood, to the bearing of false witness, even slander."

Still, as a young person who was subjected to an unrelenting Baptist upbringing as well as constant coast-to-coast travel, I can see the value in having such a site. For discriminating church-goers who are looking for a new church home, it's good to have firsthand and honest feedback on exactly what a given worship service will entail.

Besides, churchgoers are already "reviewing" churches informally and offline, anyhow. Why not bring these conversations into the light?

Let us know what you think in the comments.

In late November, ReadWriteWeb covered the launch of Google's map-based coupon program where mobile users can access deals through Place Pages. Coupled with the fact that you can save your search results to your favorite maps, users may find fewer and fewer reasons to visit location-based review sites.

In your opinion can Google oust Yelp and Citysearch as the leader in business reviews? Let us know in the comments below.

Created by gaming site Nimblebit's Ian Marsh, App Classics analyzes iTunes rating and sales information to determine which applications have remained popular over time. The apps that make the cut are then awarded either a gold, silver or bronze medal based on their status.

The interface to the site is similar to that of the social network for bookworms, Shelfari or the iPhone app Classics (iTunes link) which displays classic novels as books on a bookshelf. Like those, App Classics features a wooden bookshelf where the icons for the applications are displayed and labeled by name. A drop-down menu at the top lets you filter the shelves by category (games, business, social networking, etc.). The "Games" category is even sub-divided into further sections (strategy, board, card, etc.).

Video Reviews Rock, but Missing Apps Don't

Click on any of the apps and you'll be taken to the app's page where you're provided with information similar to that which the App Store provides - screenshots and descriptions.

However, the best part about the app subpages is the video reviews. Using videos pulled from YouTube, you can actually see the app in action. Watching YouTube videos is something many users often do before buying a new application - this just makes it easier. 

And, as it's rapidly becoming par for the course these days, you can also share your findings via Twitter and Facebook. 

So how does App Classics stand up in terms of selection? For the most part, OK. The apps featured on the site do seem to reflect those that are deserving of "classic" status, but there are some glaring omissions as well. For example, under social networking, Facebook isn't listed. Under news, there's no Wall Street Journal. Under weather, there's no Weather Bug. We find it hard to believe that these apps weren't worthy of inclusion - were the reviews really so bad?

We're Watching this One

It could be just a case of new launch bugs - after all, App Classics was only unveiled yesterday. Given time, they may work out these kinks so true "classics" don't get overlooked.

Again, this is another site that hasn't mastered the perfect formula, unfortunately, but definitely one whose concept and implementation is to be admired. We'll say it's worth watching for now, but it's not there just yet.

To conduct the research, Kostakos worked with a large sample of online ratings. As MIT's Technology Review reports, the researcher and his team studied hundreds of thousands of items and millions of votes across all three sites. In each and every case, they discovered that small numbers of users accounted for the largest number of ratings. For example, on Amazon, only 5% of active Amazon users ever cast votes on more than 10 products but a small handful of users voted on hundreds of items. Said Kostakos, "if you have two or three people voting 500 times, the results may not be representative of the community overall."

This is hardly the first time that the so-called "wisdom of the crowds" has been called into question. The term, which implies that a diverse collection of individuals makes more accurate decisions and predications than individuals or even experts, has been used in the past to describe how everything from Wikipedia to user-generated news sites like Digg.com offer better services than anything created by a smaller group could do.

Of course, we now know that simply isn't true. For one thing, Wikipedia isn't written and edited by the "crowd" at all. In fact, 1% of Wikipedia users are responsible for half of the site's edits. Even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, has been quoted as saying that the site is really written by a community, "a dedicated group of a few hundred volunteers."

And as for Digg.com, a site whose algorithm is constantly tweaked in attempts to democratize the votes of its users, it still remains a place where a handful of power users can make or break getting a news item to the site's front page.

Attempts to Address the Issue

It's not surprising then to discover that, when it comes to review sites, it's again small groups that are in control there too. Some sites, including Amazon, attempt to address this discrepancy by allowing users to vote on the helpfulness of reviews - a much easier process than having to write a review yourself. Also, local business finder and recommendations site Yelp implemented ways for business owners to respond to what they feel are inaccurate reviews by way of an owner comments feature. Unfortunately, despite these efforts, the small groups still remain in control of these so-called "popular opinion" features.

According to the article, another professor at CMU, Niki Kittur, suggested that sites create new tools for transparency. For example, there should be an easy way to see a summary of a user's contributions which would quickly reveal any bias. He also suggested removing overly positive and negative reviews.

Earlier this year, we looked at another user-generated review site which attacked this problem from another angle. Lunch.com, a new Yelp competitor, uses something they call their "Similarity Network" which matches you to other site users who share your interests. That way, instead of looking at a list of reviews which could originate from anyone with an agenda or axe to grind, you're focused on reviews from others like you.

Still, there is yet to be a perfect solution to the problem. Perhaps it's time we give up the idea that the "wisdom of the crowds" was ever a driving force behind any socialized, user-generated anything and realize that, just like in life, there will always be active participants as well as the passive passerbys.

Yelp + Digg + Foursquare = GraffitiGeo

GraffitiGeo's first mobile application will initially suffer from all the usual problems of sites and services that rely on user-generated reviews. Until enough people start using the service, there won't be much value to it. While the concept behind the mobile review app is solid, its focus primarily on restaurants at the moment means it's not likely to attract a large user base right off the bat. There are already a large number of mobile restaurant applications out there, not to mention there's Yelp, which does restaurant reviews and a lot more.

The GraffitiGeo team acknowledges they have competition in this area, but are quick to point out the others' shortcomings. For example, Yelp reviews are too long - especially in "the day and age of Twitter," they write on their blog. They also incorporate the Digg-like voting element for fast rankings (which Yelp does not), offer Facebook Connect integration for easy sign in, introduce nifty heatmaps to highlight the hotspots, and let you leave a comment with only 2 taps (Yelp takes 5-6). In short, they feel they've designed an application specifically for the mobile platform where Yelp just ported their successful website to mobile instead.

The Digg-like voting aspect is probably the app's killer feature. Instead of star ratings or lengthy reviews, you can simply vote "thumbs up" in order to rate a restaurant positively or a "thumbs down" if you're not so pleased. This ease-of-use makes the barrier to entry that much lower and could encourage more participation from casual users.

Another element to GraffitiGeo is the game aspect. This may or may not be a plus, in our opinion. With inspiration obviously borrowed from mobile social network/game Foursquare, GraffitiGeo awards points for any activity, whether that's a vote, a comment, or anything else. After reaching 100 points (aka "street cred"), you can start or join a "mob." Not a violent mob, of course, just a "mob." Mobs can claim territories which, in turn, unlocks more features in the application. There are also badges which can be earned. The entire setup is explained here. It's a bit complex and frankly, we're not sure if this is the sort of app that needs a gameplay element. If you're trying to find out if a restaurant is worth trying out, you're probably more interested in reading reviews and checking ratings than you are in playing with a bunch of online friends.

Even Better: An Augmented Reality Version

The real trick up GraffitiGeo's sleeve, however, is the app that's yet to come. Basically, the next app from GraffitiGeo is an augmented reality version of what's described above. That sounds much more appealing, to be honest. With the iPhone's viewfinder, you scan the restaurant in question and GraffitiGeo comments will float across your screen. What's really cool about the AR app, though, is that you don't necessarily have to have a restaurant in the viewfinder to see these ratings. Because the app is location-based, it knows what's nearby. In the demo, they aim the app down the street from where they're standing and GraffitiGeo displays the ratings for all the restaurants on that block. If you're ever just wandering around looking for a place to eat, this could be a real timesaver. We imagine you'll then be able to interact with the app in other ways, too, but that's hard to tell from the YouTube video demo.

GraffitiGeo's first effort may or may not be worth your time, especially considering its already robust competition, but the AR app definitely looks worth the wait.

Just login with your AppUseful account or with Facebook Connect, and you're magically transformed from a disgruntled social media fanatic to a pithy tech reviewer with a vengeance. Remember that time in 2008 when you couldn't get a beta invite for that one startup? Here's your chance to let it all out.

Here's why we find this interesting: There's an awful lot of back-channel chatter and blog pontification about any social media app. Gauging overall public response is a matter of either guesswork or metrics analytics, neither of which are our particular specialty. For startups, for journalists, and for users, it's helpful to know what people are saying without having to troll all around the Internet to find out.

As an aside to the AppUseful creators: Since the site is new and there's not a lot of UGC for the time being, how about fleshing it out with quotes from and links to bloggers' reviews for the time being?

Second, AppUseful is a catalog of the social web that can direct users to new apps they might find, well, useful. E.g., I want to know more about how musicians can market themselves online. AppUseful has a music category. I already knew about Last.fm and Pandora, but what about Grooveshark? If the word in the user review is that it's more useful and flexible and allows indie musicians to sell tracks, then it's right up my alley. And I might not have heard of it otherwise.

With featured (Bing, Wolfram Alpha), recent (Google Wave), and popular (Gmail, Digg) sections, user-oriented discovery and review of apps is simple and fun. Also, it takes a lot less time than trolling tech blogs and flaming the comments because a particular beta app didn't work for you.

Why We Need This

Sites like Yelp, Amazon, the iTunes store, and others have been coming under fire for not having trustworthy reviews. Thanks to anonymous user IDs on some sites, reviewers can be anyone with any agenda. Often they are. On Lunch, however, those drive-by reviews contributed by someone associated with the company or product being reviewed (or with an axe to grind) will not be prominently featured. The reason? Lunch.com's Similarity Network.

The Similarity Network

The Similarity Network is probably the most important feature of this new community - without it, Lunch would just be just another Yelp. After signing up, you kick start the matching engine by playing "ExhilaRATE." Although that name is somewhat unintuitive, clicking the link takes you to a section of the site where you can - guess what? - rate things like movies, books, food, sports, politics, animals...whatever. The experience of rating items here is a lot like that of Amazon's recommendation engine. If you've ever killed a few minutes on Amazon training it to get to know you better, you'll find Lunch.com's engine fairly similar.

The difference is that Lunch.com's engine groups things to rate into categories with titles that sound a lot like Facebook Apps (Top Movies of 2009, What's your Favorite Wine?). The Facebook flavor to these "games" makes sense because in the future, Lunch.com will launch a Facebook connected-experience, perhaps even a standalone app. In the meantime, however, you must go to the site to rate items.

The more you rate on Lunch, the better your matches become. You can see your matches and the percentage of compatibility between you and those like you. There are also tag cloud displays that show what items you both like and which ones you don't.

With Lunch, You Can Rate Anything

If you're still wondering why you would migrate away from more mainstream sites to something like Lunch.com, there's another reason this particular community holds appeal: it allows you to make anything ratable. Again unlike Yelp, ratings don't have to focus on products, services, places, etc. They could also be opinion pieces - like what you thought of Michelle Obama's new outfit for example. That opens the door for a much wider range of recommendations and - since you're matched with those like you - those recommendations will be relevant to your interests.

Lunch.com is in private beta, but you can try it now with the invite code "ReadWriteWeb." To use it, just click the link on the right-hand side of the screen that says "Have an invite code?"

]]> Discuss]]>

Was MemoryUp a "Rogue" Application?

Whether or not MemoryUp actually destroyed personal data and spammed people's contacts, as it was said to have done, is unknown. However, it would have been difficult for it to have accomplished those things. The app required no special privileges to install, so it's hard to imagine how it could have accessed the data and email addresses or how it could have sent out the spam. Also, for what it's worth, the company behind the app adamantly denies the claims. Says Robert Lee, chief technical associate for eMobiStudio, "We are very disturbed by these reports. Whatever damage is out there has not been done by our product."

...Or a Victim of Community Backlash?

The truth about this application may be that it just wasn't very good, not that it was dangerous malware. Many comments about the app in the Android store (prior to the app's removal) and in the forums weren't about losing data but about how the app wasn't worth installing because it provided no real value to the user.

What's even more apparent, though, in reading through the posts and comments about MemoryUp, is that many members of the Android community seemed to have a grudge against the app's creator, Peter Liu, whose drive-by advertising in forum postings got under people's skin. "How many times are you going to advertise this on here?" wrote one user. Later, others bragged and joked about running the "Memory folks out of town." "Peter needs to get a life," said yet another user.

It stands to reason that a handful of Android community members decided to disparage the application to get back at the app's developer...but something like that could never be proven, only suspected.

Yet, if that was the case, those people inadvertently ended up hurting Android in the process. By raising questions about the safety and security of Android platform, they helped to spread "FUD" (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) about this new mobile OS. Even worse, these rumors make the iPhone's closed and "by approval only" model look like the safer, smarter choice when it comes to phones. But as anyone involved in the open movement will tell you, that is not necessarily the case.

You can fine the new beta at beta.citysearch.com.

More Local

Besides giving the service a cleaner and more modern look, Citysearch also retooled the back-end to allow users to perform more granular searches. While the old Citysearch was only focused on 140 metropolitan areas, the new version allows you to drill down to the neighborhood level.

Social

The new version of Citysearch puts more emphasis on the social experience by highlighting reviews from your Facebook friends while browsing through reviews. Besides making the sign-in easier for new users, Citysearch now also allows you to publish your updates on the service to your Facebook profile. On the service itself, setting up a profile has now become easier, though you can't really do too much with these profiles besides adding your profile picture.

Users can now also vote reviews up or down, which is a nice feature, given that some reviews can be blatantly biased.

The update also puts more emphasis on professionally produced videos of local establishments. The new player, which is provided by BrightCove, allows for wide-screen HD playback, which is a nice upgrade from the old version.

Mobile

Early next year, Citysearch will start to allow users to upload their own photos and videos to the service. Citysearch also expects to release a native iPhone application around the same time, though for now, the updated mobile site is already quite useful.

Overall, this is a nice update to Citysearch and puts the service back on par with its competitors. In the mobile market, however, review services like Yelp or discovery services like Whrll have a head-start and it will be interesting to see if Citysearch's mobile site can compete with these.

The first service to feature BooRah's data is Kosmix.com, a small semantic search engine that now prominently displays BooRah ratings and data for most restaurant related searches.

Competition

Yelp, BooRah's most direct competitor, also features a comprehensive set of APIs and developers have already made good use of it while developing mobile applications, especially on the iPhone. The availability of these APIs has given Yelp a clear boost in the past.

BooRah is playing catch-up here, but it does have enough features to differentiate itself from its competition and this API is a step in the right direction. The only feature that seems missing from the API to make it even more useful is the ability to send reviews to BooRah directly.

Customers of the App Store will be in for a rude awakening if they try to review an app without purchasing it first. Customers intending to do so will encounter the following error message:

When checking out reviews of App Store apps, we've all seen the comments about fake reviews. The App Store's review system has helped perpetuate itself into a free for all buffet for spam and phony reviews. Users were welcome to leave any comment they wish with no consequences. Needless to say, Apple is looking to stop this from happening in the future.

A Step in the Right Direction

While, this won't quell more problematic concerns with the App Store, developers will appreciate the new restriction. Fake reviews can cause developers serious head-aches. These fake reviews are usually negative or positive depending on numerous factors such as developer popularity and overall community opinion. Developers won't have to worry about fake bad press or fake positive reviews. Apple is hopying that this new restriction will stop the App Store from being more of a popularity contest, than a useful center for information.