Emailed to New York: Buzzd iPhone App
Nihal Mehta, co-founder and CEO of Buzzd, told FastCompany.com the point is to make Twitter a more useful local tool. “For Twitter users, information about specific venues would be more easily searchable,” he says. “For example, if I want to search tweets from the bar Jack, if I search ‘Jack’ it gives me a lot of noise. Hashceratops would suggest searching for ‘#barjack’ for example to return actual tweets about the venue and not the person.”
HashCeratops (yes, that’s really the name) is a group being led by Buzzd, the service that finds hot places in cities based on other location services. One main feed Buzzd looks to for its data is the Twitter stream. The problem is that without a standard for naming locations, it can be hard to parse tweets to find out exactly where people are. Hence, HashCeratops.
Sure, the iPhone has a ton apps to help you out if you are in a new city and trying to figure out where the best place to have a good time is, but what if you don’t have or just plain don’t like the iPhone? Buzzd is free and works with anyone who has internet on their phone, and includes real time pictures and reviews of all the cool places in town. Now you can get drunk and pretend to be someone else in a new town, at a place where there will actually be people.
Whether you’re new to a city or getting tired of your usual scenes there’s no shortage of night life review apps for the iPhone, but what about the rest of us? Buzzd helps you discover the coolest bars, clubs, restaurants and events with real time reviews and pics so you can see what’s happening now.
The buzzd mobile application is just a part of the buzzd solution. Whether you’re going to their website on your computer or BlackBerry, or using the mobile app, buzzd is a go-to guide to what’s buzzin.
This new app not only provides brass tacks info on nearby venues, but also rates their real-time happeningness by pulling info from Twitter and other Buzzd users; individual tweets/buzzes can also be inspected for editorial commentary, because what better way to learn if a spot’s hopping than reading “Some ‘hole next to me is tweeting at the bar”.
What’s the difference between Buzzd and regular status updates? For one, if you join their Ambassador program, you earn points for prizes after a period of time. There’s no cash involved, and no pressure, you just tweet the same thing you normally would.
With the iPhone app, you can let Buzzd determine where you are, then provide tips about nearby nightlife. Tap on spots with a “high buzzmeter,” to use Buzzd’s terminology, and you’ll find out what people are saying about the spot.