Because Facebook has already taken the fun out of recreational stalking and Hopstop has taken the fun out of navigating five major U.S. cities, one state, and two small suburban regions.
I’ve got three browser windows open while I plan tomorrow’s social rendezvous. One is for Yelp.com, where I try to put other reviewers’ 1- through 5-star ratings and comments about pricing, clientele, and atmosphere through the “Emily Filter.” One is Hopstop.com, where I’ve entered the street addresses for a handful of bars/restaurants to calculate travel time from work and from my apartment. The third window opens the website of whatever venue is up for consideration, where I’m hoping to find happy hour menus.
I’m spending as much time choosing a place to meet as I will actually having dinner and drinks (especially if I pick this place, where so-and-so on Yelp complains about slow service . . . )
I think I need another website.
I need a website that combines Yelp reviews with the semi-standardized data from Zagat Survey and also feeds info from individual restaurant websites. I want a calendar feature to help coordinate everyone’s schedules. I want to see listings based on desired mood: casual date, intimate date, double date, friend date. I want street maps with marked subway stations and I want to be able to enter the subway lines that both parties will be riding on the way to and from the place and highlight the most centralized locations.
And I want to be able to check off an option like, “We might not want to ride home together” and see route alternatives that won’t force me to prolong an awkward evening while I wait for a train. I also want names and addresses of surrounding places in case “We might be up for dessert.”
I want this site to crawl my Facebook friends list for contact info and generate a friendly e-mail to attendees that says something natural like, “Let’s check out this place” or “Haven’t been here before, want to try it?” I want to recapture the pleasures of spontaneity and experimentation and the simple value of good company over the statistics of social dining.
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