One of the things that’s still too hard to do in 2012 is recommend a place to a person and make it easy for them to store it for later.
It’s easy to say “you should go to Revolver in Gastown for a good coffee”; it’s a lot harder to get people to remember and act on that.
Why is that?
Well, you need a way to actually send “Revolver” to someone.
Then, your friend needs a way to store it for later - and make it appear later.
At Placeling, we’ve worked hard to make this easy to do; here’s how.
Let’s talk first about how to send Revolver to someone.
You can go to Placeling.com, type “Revolver” into the search box and you’ll instantly see it:
Just click on the name and you’ll be at page showing all we know about it:
Just copy the URL of the page and send it to your friend (or tweet it, share it on Facebook - whatever you want).
All your friend has to do is click “Placemark It” and it’ll be added to their map.
You can also do this in our iPhone app.
Search for Revolver and then click the paper plane button:
You can email or tweet the place (just like you could the URL) but there’s 3rd option called “Suggest It”.
Tap this and you’ll be prompted for which Placeling member you want to suggest the place to. Type in the name of your friend and add a custom message.
When you send it, they’ll receive a notification on their phone; with one tap they can add the place and your note to their phone.
Sharing a place has never been so easy.
Plus, now it’s on your phone so we’ve got the ability to see what’s nearby.
Now if only there was a way to create a “to-do list” of places we want to visit. Oh wait, we talked about how to do that two weeks ago!
Happy exploring.
A few months back I walked into a local cooking store and picked up a recent copy of The Art of Eating. It was all about Austin BBQ.
Photo courtesy of Barron
Now, I live in Vancouver and have absolutely no idea when - if ever - I’ll be in Austin. But reading the story, the places were coming alive. The pepper in the rub at Louie Mueller BBQ; the almost 90 years of heritage at Smitty’s Market; the mesquite at Cooper’s Old Time Pit Bar-B-Que.
I found my mouth salivating and I was resisting the urge to pack the entire family in the car for a no notice, 24 hour road trip south.
I had to remember these places so that one day I can visit them all.
And that’s one of the reasons we built Placeling, to make it effortlessly easy to do exactly that (and keep families together).
Here’s how I did it:
1. I opened up Placeling on my iPhone and hit the “Placemark It” button
2. In the search box I typed in the name of each place in the article. The fact that I’m in Vancouver and Cooper’s is several thousand kilometers away?
Not an issue:
3. I added some notes about the place and saved it.
But I wanted to flag it as somewhere I haven’t been so I could remember to visit it.
For that, there’s the highlight button - the star that sits next to your notes and photos about a place:
After I highlight a place, it appears differently on my map - “normal” places don’t get that golden bar:
I do this every time I hear of an interesting place. Maybe someone tells me about it. Maybe I read about it in the newspaper or a magazine (in-flight magazines are basically lists of interesting places…). Maybe it’s a blog.
I just whip out my iPhone, add the location in Placeling and highlight it.
And we’re going to figure out how to make this even easier.
Ideally you should be able to read a review on a blog and add it to Placeling with one tap.
We’re not there yet, but we wanted to share with you a simple way to make sure that you never forget an interesting place.
This morning Placeling members were greeted to a lit bit of love that’s going to make their life better: the Placeling Weekender.
If you’re a Placeling member you’ll now be getting a weekly email with recommendations on places to go and people to guide you - and we guarantee we won’t recommend something that’s already on your map.
Members in select cities will also get the opportunity to try out our new Answers product. We’re not saying much about it now, but expect to hear more over the coming weeks.
Here’s a snapshot of what the Weekender looks like. Sign up today to get it in your inbox next Thursday morning.
