Chowhound redesign, Yelp, and Paradox of Choice
Posted by Jeff June 25, 2006
In this post, I compare the chowhound redesign, yelp, and how to find good eats with the least investment of time. Summary is here. Images are clickable for larger versions.
Chowhound Classic
Tagline “For those who live to eat” — has always been a site you love to hate. A labor of love with no ad revenues, scraping by on user donations, the site features a text-based aesthetic. (We don’ need no stinking CSS!) The design (or lack of design) parallels the restaurants its readers discover - where fancy friends look around suspiciously at first, then fall in love with the food and reasonable prices.
The main draw of chowhound was its message boards: big sprawling nested discussions, one post per page. Finding a good restaurant would take an hour or two of combing through posts and seeing emerging concensus. It was only the passion of the contributors, and the knowledge that only hardcore hounds would make their way to these backrooms that made it worth it.
Lack of structure was its selling point and its main flaw. Small or new finds would often be followed by a comedy of errors, as readers tried to follow imprecise directions to obscure locations.
Yelp
A database-driven web site would have an entry for each restaurant, with address, telephone number and linked reviews - probably even an amazon-style star rating. Yelp.com is that site - sort of a localized epinions mashed up with google maps - very web 2.0. I scroll the map and restaurants appear sorted by reviews (and number of stars). A click yields the restaurant page with reviews. Pictures abound - the reviewers, the restaurants, the food. In a brilliant move, photos require a yelp account. Social features abound: reviews are given compliments, rated usefull funny or cool. It’s an addictive fun site - with the ability to send messages to members, one of who told me he’d written 80 reviews in a week.
Yelp vs. Chowhound
When we’re out shopping and want to seek out some good chow, I pull up yelp on my EVDO-equipped laptop. Sorting by review, the “Maptastic” feature gives me ten choices near my current location. Fewer choices is a good thing: Paradox of choice says that with more choices, happiness goes down..
I’m in Boston, a town filled with college students and recent graduates; my sense is that Yelp’s average age is mid-20’s, with more interest in fashion, nightclubs, etc. Chowhound likely has a wider range of ages, united by the common love of food. There are deep wells in Chowhound of people who have travelled and pay very close attention to their chow. Chowhounders seem to focus in on the food, not other aspects like whether it’d be a good date spot.
Chowhound 2.0
Now, Chowhound has a new redesign. Here are my impressions, compared to the classic chowhound site:
Feels very fast and responsive.
Ads: flash based, animated.Distracting.
Clean, bold red navigation elements.
Slick world map
Thread all in one page: didn’t use to be able to do that: Huge annoyance, much better now.
RSS feeds updated
Broken permalinks: old links to the site don’t work.
Content good as ever.
login: has stronger sense of identity, accountability
The Great Taco Search
Letr’s try a test– tacos in Waltham: I thought this would be a good example of a difference. First off- Yelp knows location. I ran a search for tacos in Waltham, only looking within 5 miles. This yields 4 places. From these hits, Taqueria Mexico sounds like good bet. Or, I can view on Google Maps .
Chowhound’s search only allows date/author restrictions - . The search shows the 10 most recent threads, out of 62. The new thread-at-once interface makes it more readable, but the results are inherently fuzzy: you get to be a fly on the wall on a lot of conversations, and draw your own conclusions. They include a place Yelp has never heard of - Tacqueria el Mariachi.
Bottom Line
Pressed for time? Yelp maps: find the closest, best-rated.
On foot? Yelp maps.
Find places near your hotel in a new town? Yelp.
Want to find the absolute best? Chowhound.
Find latest news, like if the chef has quit? Chowhound.
Want to hang out with obsessed food lovers? Chowhound.
Nice writeup. Just wanted to let you know that every Chowhound board has an RSS feed and more are on the way.
Thanks Chris- I’ve corrected my post.