Net@night 177

Net@night Episode 177

Net@night 177: Flavors.me

Facebook Messages, Google Hotpot, Foursquare trophies, easy dynamic home pages from Flavors.me, and more.

Guests

• Jonathan Marcus, flavors.me

News Of The Week

• Facebook Messages

• Google launches Hotpot, a recommendation engine for Places

Hotpot takes all of Google Places‘ ratings and reviews features and adds a more personal touch. Currently, Place Pages mostly aggregate review data from sources such as Yelp. With Hotpot, users will be encouraged to rate and review businesses directly from their Google-linked profile. Users’ ratings and reviews are tracked with a counter at the top of each profile, and likes and dislikes are remembered and used in Google’s recommendation engine.

• Foursquare Launches Trophy Case

Today, the service has launched an overhaul of the badge area on Foursquare.com. Previously, this was only an element of your profile page, now they have a new “Trophy Case” area to better showcase your badges. You can see when you unlocked the badge and if it’s retired. And if you click on the badge you can also see which of our Foursquare friends have unlocked the badge.

Alongside this Trophy Case, Foursquare is rolling out their Badge Partner Program. They’ve been working with partners for some time on badges, but now things appear to be getting more formalized. While they note that the program is still in its early stage (sign up here), they’re rolling out the Trophy Case with partner badges from brands like The American Red Cross, Ellen, Radio Shack, and People magazine.

The Trophy Case has a way to separate partner badges from actual Foursquare badges.

Picks of the Week

SITE OF THE NIGHT

Foodspotting - http://www.foodspotting.com

• Wins Mashable's Fast Pitch Competition

Significant Products

• Link URL and optional brief description

Sponsors

Ford

• SyncMyRidePodcast.com
• Ford Sync #8
• ad times: :48 - 1:04 and 20:42 - 23:44

Production Information

• Edited by: jeff
• Notes:

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