UPDATED 23:06 EDT / MARCH 07 2011

Bizzy Gets Busy with Check “Outs” for Fresh Sentiment

It wasn’t too long ago I sat down with Bizzy to hear about their new restaurant recommendation Android app, which was aimed at optimizing the mobile experience for what it was.  Not surprisingly, Bizzy’s quickly updated its mobile apps, tweaking it for even better performance.  Also not surprising is the new feature, which is a new take on the “check-in” process.  It’s called Bizzy Check Outs.

The idea behind Check Outs is to share opinions of the places you visit instantly, before the sentiment has worn off.  Checking out of a location is what you do when you’re waiting for the check, offering immediate feedback while your restaurant experience is still fresh in your mind.  Bizzy’s designed Check Outs to operate quickly, with simplified design around gaining that fresh perspective.

To Check Out from a business, click the new button on Bizzy’s mobile app.  Staying with this simplistic approach, you’re presented with three emoticons: the happy face, the “meh” face, and the sad face.  Pick one that’s most applicable to your experience, and add any notes you’d like to share.

“When you’re on the go, the Check Out action is a much more appropriate one,” Gadi Shamia, Bizzy founder tells me.  “This check-in mechanic is something people are familiar with, and already like.  To Check Out, it only takes a few seconds.  We just want to keep it fast, simple and easy.  In the future we may do things like remind people to check out, but right now, it’s a new habit to get users to take out their phone and check out.  We noticed that people often take out their phones while waiting for the check, so we want to capture their sentiment at this moment.”

Now, you can already add notes and tips with other location-aware apps like Foursquare, but Bizzy’s process of Checking Out is directly tied to its recommendation system, which is constantly building its algorithm around user activity.  Bizzy’s app interactions have always been minimalistic in their approach, utilizing key directives in order to glean true user feedback in order to generate the best recommendations possible.  Instead of wholly relying on your Facebook social graph to generate recommendations, Bizzy is building its own data set.  And since the new era of social networking deems it useless to create your own social network and gain users on a stand alone site, Bizzy’s gotten creative with its points of user interaction.

The Check Out process does more than just take notes on a given restaurant.  The mere selection of an emoticon offers Bizzy valuable feedback on the sentiment around a venue, layering its recommendation system.  As Bizzy can also link your Check Outs with your favorite places, the new feature gets looped in at a rather personal level.

Right now, Bizzy’s Check Out feature has plenty of room to grow, but it’s already got its social status in check.  The new feature includes information about the business and can post to Twitter and Facebook.  What Shamia found is that social broadcasting of location-aware preferences is missing direct links back to the venue, so this is something Bizzy’s Check Out update also addresses.  “We’re not looking to build a walled garden by any means,” Shamia explains.  “We want to pull data in and push it out.”


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