Thursday, April 28, 2005

Is Lopico any good?

This is sort of a self-interested question, or at least answer, the answer is yes, or at least if I'm right it will be. LOPICO has had two main problems in its short four month history. First is traffic. While we've had a few thousand visitors, that's still not enough to really be anything, or to really matter yet. The second problem comes from those visitors that have visited the site, they haven't contributed much. I don't think in general people care as much as I do that there's really not a great local business site on the web. That's why I created LOPICO, but it's been slow going. I could easily go out and get a bunch of information for my site, list a bunch of restaurants and other business I find, but that's not the point. The point is LOPICO is supposed to be user driven. This prevents two things from getting in the way of having a site that is a true reflection of the communities that LOPICO serves. First, critics. Critics are fine, but who the hell are they? Why is their opinion worth so much. What's good to one critic may not be good to the massess. LOPICO is the voice of the masses. Who knows the community better than its citizens? No one. That's why I leave the content up to the sites visitors. The second problem I avoid is bias. One specific site (and I won't say which one, because it does have some good qualities, that I wish I had) even tells its visitors that their vote is taken into consideration, but that other factors (advertising dollars) determine hte rank. Isn't the web supposed to be a democracy? Another problem that I have with the way that some of these sites rank the businesses is that they do it by stars. Fine, I guess, but does that tell us who's the best? No. Maybe, it's just me but I want to know who's the best, and if I am a business owner I want to be the best, not tied.
Thanks to all who have added their favorites, keep it up.

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