Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site • Hacker News Board

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#101

Post by johnbenwoo » Tue, Mar 06, 2018, 6:39 AM UTC

buckhx wrote: post #38

got2surf wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations! This looks like a great purchase, especially for the brand value of Zagat. Do you see The Infatuation continuing to focus on reviews, or adding in more analytics a la Medallia or Revinate? We do customer feedback analysis and have a few clients in the restaurant space - it's always interesting to hear about what value-adds review sites can have.

Our take right now is that The Infatuation will focus on subjective takes with our reviews and guides and Zagat will be more data driven from the community. That being said, we're going to have to be pragmatic through this. Would love to hear some of the feedback you've heard about review sites in general.

There are a lot of reasons that Yelp is frustrating, but one thing it does semi-well is include recommendations on (and, separately, pictures of) which dishes to try first. Especially at ethnic holes-in-the-wall, it can be a barrier to visiting the restaurants at all.

Happy to chat offline - feel free to reach out at Ben@redskyinsights.com

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#102

Post by ma2rten » Tue, Mar 06, 2018, 7:27 AM UTC

buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

That's interesting. How tied is it to Google's tech? Do you get access to Google's servers? Do you get engineering support from Google?

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#103

Post by lsen001 » Tue, Mar 06, 2018, 8:18 AM UTC

buckhx wrote: post #48

ohf wrote: post #41

So - Zagat and the Infatuation have a reputation for quality over quantity, and function more as "restaurant guides" than "review services", such as Yelp (fwiw, Yelp sucks). I'd wager that Google doesn't have a platform like this in its corporate strategy. What other high (-er) quality, curated content does Google provide? I suppose a case could be made for its SEO algorithms (if you call that curating), but I feel t…

Don't have too much context on high (er) quality content in the rest of Google's portfolio, but we definitely were drawn to Zagat and saw it as a great counterpart to The Infatuation for exactly this reason. Quality over quantity will remain our principle strategy to tackling this space, but we will be exploring new avenues to scale this out more broadly with Zagat moving forward.

Truth be told, I haven't heard of The Infatuation until today. However, I have heard of Zagat and imbue a level of trust with that brand name. I may not represent your main target audience, but I've done many searches for restaurant recommendations, mostly on Yelp (with the appropriate grain of salt). Now, I'm curious - has the idea of fully assuming the Zagat name been kicked around? It's been a while since the Google acquisition, however, it's been around so long that there's still good name recognition.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#104

Post by buckhx » Tue, Mar 06, 2018, 2:04 PM UTC

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #95

buckhx wrote: post #2

CTO of The Infatuation here. We're excited to get rolling on this and have some really unique challenges ahead to extract Zagat from internal Google technology. Feel free to reach out with any questions. If you want to help us tackle this, check out our openings on our Engineering team: https://www.theinfatuation.com/careers

Can you fix the Android app, it crashes on launch every time on Android 8. I've never used it, ever.

Android app will get a face lift, but it'll be a few months out as we need to transition the infrastructure over first.

Re: Google to Sell Zagat to The Infatuation, an Upstart Review Site

#105

Post by buckhx » Tue, Mar 06, 2018, 2:11 PM UTC

lsen001 wrote: post #103

buckhx wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't have too much context on high (er) quality content in the rest of Google's portfolio, but we definitely were drawn to Zagat and saw it as a great counterpart to The Infatuation for exactly this reason. Quality over quantity will remain our principle strategy to tackling this space, but we will be exploring new avenues to scale this out more broadly with Zagat moving forward.

Truth be told, I haven't heard of The Infatuation until today. However, I have heard of Zagat and imbue a level of trust with that brand name. I may not represent your main target audience, but I've done many searches for restaurant recommendations, mostly on Yelp (with the appropriate grain of salt). Now, I'm curious - has the idea of fully assuming the Zagat name been kicked around? It's been a while since the Goog…

Really looking to make the brands symbiotic. A model we're drawing from is Rotten Tomatoes where The Infatuation is the critic score and Zagat is the community score.