14 DAY TRIAL // Google is moving forward with its social, local recommendations service Hotpot and is now integrating it in Google Maps. Whenever you visit Google's online mapping solution, the most recent activity from your friends on Hotpot is displayed on the left side. In theory, this should make it easier to keep up with what your friends are up to and also drive up engagement with Hotpot.
Hotpot is Google's latest experiment in the location market. It's similar to Yelp and other user review sites for restaurants, hotels and so on, but it places social activity at its center.
"When you need a great restaurant, hotel or pub, who do you turn to first for a recommendation? Your friends. We wanted to recreate that valuable exchange with Hotpot, our local recommendation engine from Google Places," Octavian Costache, a Hotpot Engineer, explained.
"Because we find adding friends on Hotpot so valuable to the experience, today we’re excited to announce a new feature that makes it easy to stay up to date with the latest place recommendations from your Hotpot friends," he said.
"If you’re a Hotpot user, when you visit Google Maps on your desktop computer, you’ll now see a stream listing the most recent rating and review activity of your Hotpot friends," he announced.
The left sidebar is rather unused in many circumstances and is empty when you first land on Google Maps. Filling it with recent actions from your friends is not only a great use of the space, it also serves to promote Hotpot.
Because Hotpot friends are exclusive to the product itself, meaning that you have to have a separate profile on Hotpot from your main Google one and so does each of your friends, keeping users engaged is crucial.
And the feature could prove very useful as well as you might serendipitously find some great place you might not have heard of if not for Hotpot.
The feature is still in beta, Google says, but beta labels aren't something that uncommon at Google. Hotpot feels like a solid product in the emerging market but, despite its clout, Google has its work cut out ahead of it.