Zomato Gets New Social Features; Shows Trappings Of A Foodie Social Network!

Zomato, India’s largest online food and lifestyle guide has now made the service more ‘ Social ’. Zomato has been pushing the barriers consistently by introducing online ticketing for events and launching the Citibank Zomato Restaurants Guide (a print magazine) in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune. The company has announced that they have added some key social features onto the website which makes the whole experience of using the service an absolute pleasure. Zomato has the most pleasing UI and design we have seen in an Indian service. In addition to having mobile apps for all the major platforms (even a Chrome extension !), the website is very well laid out. The social features which have been added are designed to help users follow updates from other users about their favorite restaurants. Users can also create wishlists, follow reviewers and their friends. Facebook Integration has also been added, so now you can share all your Zomato activity on Facebook. Here is a brief rundown on all the features that have been added. 1. Trending Restaurants: This new feature shows the top restaurants in your city and this is calculated on the basis of user behavior on Zomato for a period of one week. Every week, Zomato will put up a list of 25 top restaurants in the city. According to Zomato, the trending restaurants and their positions are calculated by getting a weighted average of the following parameters: Pageviews of a restaurant on zomato website and mobile apps Organic searches for the restaurant Number of reviews (with 4 & 5 stars) and votes for a restaurant Average time spent by a user on a restaurant’s page The awesome part about this is the fact that all of this is user generated content and restaurants will now have something to compete about with each other. 2. Top Foodies: This is a genius move by the company and helps give an incentive to early adopters and voracious users to get recognized for their good taste in food and restaurants. Zomato calculates the ranking of these top foodies based on the reviews that they have submitted. These reviews are moderated and the more reviews you do, the more you can up your cred! There is a gamification aspect here too! You can actually unlock 4 levels to achieve Top Foodie status! Here’s how Zomato explains it. 3. Featured Reviews: Every week Zomato scans through the reviews that its users submit and chooses the best reviews which are then featured on this section of the website. The requirement is that the reviews should be original, more than 100 words and sans any objectionable content. 3 lucky reviewers will get food vouchers from the best restaurants in their respective city for all their efforts. This move makes reviewing a fun activity and will eventually lead to some excellent content and make it easier for other foodies to decide about a particular restaurant in their city. 4. Upcoming Events: Well, restaurants aren’t always about food, right? What about events and nightlife? Zomato has got you covered here with a elegant Events section which shows what is happening in your city every week. You can refer to the calendar to check out the latest events happening in the city! (If you are in Mumbai, I sympathize! You can join fellow protesters here . ) 5. Facebook Integration: You can log into Zomato using its Facebook app which then makes it easy for you to let all your Facebook friends know what you have been upto in the city. You can share your reviews, recommend restaurants and share your achievements (Top Foodies) with everyone. We know how some viral Facebook apps become all spammy but considering that Zomato is a restaurant guide, I don’t think any such thing will come to pass. I mean, how many people do you know who eat out everyday?! Deepinder Goyal, CEO and Founder of Zomato explains the reasoning behind the social features. “We always have one question on our minds ‘How can we simplify the search for best places to eat around you?’. On Zomato, every foodie searching for restaurants, can easily view the menu, cuisine, cost, reviews, photos and location to be able to make an informed decision on where to eat today. We are now taking it one step further by launching a host of social features on Zomato. ‘Which restaurants have my friends visited?’ ‘Do they recommend trying out those restaurants?’ ‘What is new at this restaurant that I really like?’ these are questions that one would often want to know the answers to before taking the first bite and you can now find them on Zomato.” Pramod Rao is the VP of Marketing at Zomato and he believes that the social layer will help them build an even bigger network of foodies. “In a month, close to 3.5 million users log on to Zomato to decide where to eat today. By introducing a social layer over our existing product, this growing community will now be able to discover the best places to eat based on several user generated actions on Zomato. You can now build your foodie network by following your friends and other foodies in the city and get updates on what they have rated and reviewed. You can also favorite a restaurant and get to know what’s new at these places. These features will go a long way in helping our users search for the perfect place to eat.” A Foodie Social Network? Yes, that is exactly where Zomato is heading! Niche social networks can be excellent as they have a high engagement and ultimately this engagement makes the service even more stronger. Techcircle reports that Zomato will be going International in a few months starting with Singapore. There could not have been a better time to expand as the service is at its peak in terms of functionality and features! Mobile apps, Facebook Connect and all these social features will go long way in establishing a foothold in a foreign nation, especially the smartphone addicted foodies from Asia Pacific! Check out the new Zomato if you haven’t already and tell us how you liked the new social features in the comments. Looking For A Social Media Agency?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency

[via WATBlog.com - Web, Advertising and Technology Blog in India]