“No one has ever called a friend and asked for a restaurant review,” says founder Jeremy Fisher. “It’s not a natural behavior. But pretty much everyone’s made a restaurant recommendation… it’s an activity that lots of people are doing without any external incentives.”
Dinevore users create lists of restaurants that they have been to or want to eat at, such as “The Best Pizza in New York” or “My Favorites.”
Other users can follow these lists. When they do so, all of the restaurants on it are displayed in a personal recommendation feed. Following users works the same way. Each personal feed is automatically organized by proximity to its owner’s current location, but it c an also be organized by most listed or highest rated and be filtered by neighborhood, cuisine, and price range.
The startup’s approach to recommendations contrasts with that of Yelp, Urbanspoon, and Zagat, which allow users to search and rate local restaurants, but don’t account for their personal tastes.
“I’m personally pretty discriminating when it comes to recommendations,” explains founder Jeremy Fisher. “I have a couple friends that I really trust, and I also like to get recommendations from New York Magazine, The Times and Serious Eats. If that’s the signal I want, Dinevore makes it really easy to tune into that signal without any noise. It’s equally easy for someone who doesn’t relate to professional critics to tune those critics out.”
Dinevore’s list format allows users to choose which recommendations to take seriously based upon the recommender’s dini ng history. If...
