14 DAY TRIAL // Location plays an increasingly important role online, yet there aren't any breakthrough services or features and not for lack of trying. Hotpot, Google's latest attempt, aims to merge social features with local reviews and recommendations. It does borrow features from several services but the combination is rather unique.
Hotpot is based on the idea that recommendations from the people you know are always going to be better than generic ones from the web.
However, there hasn't been a simple way of seeing what places your friends like, especially when you're actively searching for one.
"Today we’re excited to share the first step: an early release of Hotpot - a local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends. With Hotpot, we’re making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant and trustworthy," Lior Ron, Product Manager at Google, wrote.
Hotpot relies on three data sources to provide you with the best recommendations. It's built on the Google Places database which now lists 50 million places from around the world.
You and your friends will be able to rate and even write short reviews for those places. Based on your own ratings, you will get recommendations from Google for places that are similar to the ones you liked, based several criteria.
Most likely, the social data plays a crucial role, you like several places that another user likes, you're bound to like others he or she has rated highly but may not have visited yet.
At the same time, Hotpot will also recommend places that you friends liked, anywhere around the world, so you can have a trustworthy source.
At heart, Hotpot offers a social experience and it's one of the most thought out we've seen from Google yet. You will need a profile for Hotpot and, while it will be based on your Google account, you get to choose what information others can see about you, essentially your nickname and photo.
Only your friends will be able to see your real name and other info and you have to add those friends to the Hotpot list manually.
Hotpot is also integrated in Google Maps for Android so you can get recommendations and rate places on the go. An iPhone app is also on the works and you use the website of course.