TrustedPlaces offers lessons on community: it's all about passion or problems

I went to NMKForum 2007 yesterday to get a full blast of Web 2.0 stuff from the commercial end, and it felt like a day off. No pressure to blog because so many people like Robin Hamman, Simon Collister, Bobbie Johnson and Jemima Kiss  were doing it.
The opening keynote was from Jason Calacanis, who has launched the web search Mahalo.  This has real people (not mechanical "spiders") researching links, so you get a few good ones instead of pages and pages. The big news yesterday was that through Mahalo Greenhouse they are going to open up the job of doing this to anyone who can show appropriate skills, paying $10 - $15 a link. The bad news for us is that the current focus is US, and the general researcher profile is out of work actor/screen writer in LA. Bobbie was sceptical:

Right now I remain unconvinced by Mahalo - which not only seems like portal listing 2.0, but must also be acutely labour-intensive and inherently problematic - but then again, he's got a big bunch of investors behind him, so perhaps I'm missing out on something.

Too right. Jason says he doesn't have to worry for a couple of years whether it makes money ... he just has to concentrate on building volume. Hmm, different world.
Looking for something a bit more real than virtual, I ended up sitting next to the charming Walidd Al Saqqaf, co-founder of TrustedPlaces, who only had a modest £500,000 start up ... but seems to be doing pretty well with it.

Click To Play

His site enables you to search for and review restaurants, cafes, pubs, and clubs. When you join up you whizz through a little quiz on what sort of food, music, people and places you like. That enables you to see whether your tastes are likely to be similar to those of the reviewer. You can also check what your friends are recommending, and use the site to reach a collaborative decision with a group on where to go.
You will soon be able to interview your waiter or waitress (if they are willing) and load that to the site.
It all looks rather addictive, so I shot some video in which Walid explains it all much better than I can. We had to adjourn to the stairs for some quiet, and I'm not sure my over-the-shoulder screen shots are very informative, but I think you will catch the enthusiasm.
Walid had one line with, I felt, wider application than his current project. There are two things, he said, that pull people together into online communities: sharing passions, and resolving common problems. That was a good enough learning point from the day. Trusted reviews may have to wait till the weekend.

Comments

[Walid]

Hi David,
It was great meeting you too yesterday and thanks for the blog entry and video. Just a small comment in your blog you mention "You will soon be able to interview your waiter or waitress (if they are willing) and load that to the site", actually what I was meant to say was that when people are video blogging a place they may wish to interview the waiter or waitress. It isn't something we're encouraging nor is it a specific feature of the site but members may do it out of their own choice. At the moment members are passionately reviewing their favourite places, food, and drinks. We expect this to continue as we start introducing new ways for them to create their own content.
Hope to see you all on TrustedPlaces and reading about your favourite places!
Cheeers,

Walid

[Simon Collister]

Hope you enjoyed the day, david - and once again sorry I didn't get a chance to meet you (I was kind of on PR duty for NMK)!

I think the day was a nice mix of big ideas/projects from keynotes and a slew of really smart, community focussed ideas/projects. Will definitely meet you at some point!

[David Wilcox]

Thanks Simon, and yes an interesting mix. Personally I would have liked it to be a bit more participative ... bigger/informative name badges, hosting, encouragement to table talk, user generated content ...
There's a challenge for next year: what is conference/forum like when it is modelled on web 2.0? Problem is everyone would expect it to be free :-)