Ask HN: Please review my startup. theBuzz.at

The idea is straightforward. Digg (or HN) style voting for local bars and restaurants, see what's popular now.

All vote's are upvotes, there are no stars and a vote means "I'd go here again". Users can vote for the same place weekly. Content is submitted by users, not pre-populated but I've integrated the Google Search API to make searching for and adding venues easier.

I've finally managed to get a demo out for testing - it's London only at the moment (split into 150+ neighbourhoods) and there's still lots to do. That said, I'd be interested to get your impressions and thoughts on the idea and execution at this stage.

Obviously there will be a critical mass issue but right now I'm concentrating on making a product worthy of mass consumption.

http://www.thebuzz.at/

Very well done in terms of UI. I like the concept. The problem comes down to: why will I come back on a fairly regular basis? Not sure if that is every week, every month,etc. but it should be fairly regularly.

Thanks. I hope to roll out to more cities (including Los Angeles) pretty quickly once the initial phase of ironing out kinks has passed.

The idea of displaying up and down votes is something I had thought about and I can certainly see some of the benefits. However, it is at odds with the driving force behind the site which was was to simplfy the criteria by which venues are "rated". That said, if it turns out that it's something the user base really want... well, everything is flexible :)

Buzzes don't wear off after time although the default view is "most recently popular". I like the idea of displaying buzzes by time. I might develop on that. Thanks.

The reason I see to return regularly, say every week, would be to check out the places gaining traction now. This is a reasonably fast moving area, bars open and close, go in and out of vouge on a fairly regularly.

Regualr users might go out for food or drinks on a fairly regualr basis - whether it's an area they know and want to see if there's anything new/hot or they're going out in a new neighbourhood - I see both as valid reaons to check out the site.

I'd be interested to see a service like this track what is happening real time. So, imagine a user goes to a bar and texts/emails/iPhone app, whatever, that would buzz up that local for the night. Then users could look to see what is going on in real time. That may be what you are doing here, if so, I would make it more clear. As it is, it seems like a review site, almost like Urbanspoon.