March 30, 2008
It’s been a fun and fast first month out of the gate. A lot of things have surprised us — one of them is the hundreds of cities that people are requesting that we cover in the future. Some of these people are where I expected: Around the SF Bay Area, Boston, Chicago, Austin, etc. But the many international requests for coverage sort of caught me off guard. Here are some examples:
- Mexico City, Mexico
- Antwerp, Belgium
- Tel Aviv, Israel
- Heemstede, The Netherlands (I had to look this one up)
- Brighton, Australia
One of the things we are balancing internally is whether to build deep (make and improve a lot of features into Outalot NYC), or build broad (cover more cities). Of course, the right answer is somewhere in between these two, but it’s very encouraging to see the breadth of people who are asking for coverage. Thanks for all the requests, please keep it coming, and stay tuned, we will be expanding into more metro areas soon.
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City Coverage | 
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Posted by Jesse
March 19, 2008
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Introducing Your Network |
We rolled out a very cool feature on Outalot today called Your Network.
Your Network allows you to add other users’ bookmarks to your own, and to see users who are fans of your bookmarks. When you add a user to your network on Outalot, his bookmarks are aggregated with your own, in effect creating a personalized guide based on your friends’ recommendations. |
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The benefit of Your Network |
- Combine all your friends’ bookmarks on Outalot in one place
- Find recommended places easily, online or on your mobile phone, when you’re in an unfamiliar neighborhood.
- Use thumbs up/down, comments, and tags to describe what’s great, or lacking, about a restaurant or bar.
- Like another user’s comments? Become a fan by adding her to Your Network.
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How to add a user to Your Network
To add a user to Your Network, simply click on that person’s username. You’ll be able to see this person’s list of bookmarks, and will be prompted to add this user to your network.
TIP: To view your network
To view Your Network, visit your own bookmarks at
outalot.com/users/<yourusername>
Note you won’t see an option to view Your Network until you add others to it or others add you.
TIP: Understanding Arrows
Your Network
You→AnotherUser (You added this user to Your Network)
You↔AnotherUser (You and this user are in each others’ networks)
Your Fans
You←AnotherUser (This user is a fan of your bookmarks)
TIP: To add a bookmark
When you click on 
next to a restaurant, bar, or movie theater, it adds it to your own list of bookmarks.
No Comments » | Features, Social Network, Your Network | Tagged: network, new feature, Social Network, Your Network | Permalink
Posted by Joe
March 16, 2008
It’s been only a couple weeks since our launch, and we already have some cool data to share. Here are the top five most popular places (rated by number of people who bookmarked them):
- Babbo
- The Odeon
- Republic
- BXL Cafe
- East Side Company Bar
You can bookmark the restaurants and bars by clicking the heart 
next to a business. Use this to keep track of where you go, where you’d like to go, and share your bookmarks with your friends. Here’s mine.
We’ll periodically revisit this kind of data to keep our eyes on the up-and-coming and down-and-out places to go in NYC. More users are hopping onto the service, and this information is really starting to get interesting.
No Comments » | Features | Permalink
Posted by Jesse
March 16, 2008
This afternoon, Gothamist posted a piece about Outalot:
“New Yorkers like to go out. A lot. A website aptly called Outalot allows fast and easy browsing of three nightlife basics: restaurants, bars, and movies…”
Continue reading the full post at Gothamist.
We appreciate all the positive feedback we’ve received from users who have found out about us through local media. Here are some user comments we received this week:
- “It’s a service I personally need.”
- “Am loving the application…”
- “I just moved to Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn and read about Outalot.com on Thrillist so it’s definitely something that I will start using since I don’t really know the area yet.”
- “It’s better than Yelp.”
We are grateful to users who tag, comment, and rate local businesses, and send us updates about what’s happening in their neighborhood like restaurant openings and closings. We want to provide the highest quality data possible and your support helps us do this. Please keep it coming!
No Comments » | Product News | Tagged: data, gothamist, news, NYC, press, product | Permalink
Posted by Joe
March 13, 2008
Thanks to some local NYC blogs, in particular Down by the Hipster and 78thand2nd, our story has been picked up by some popular local media, including Gridskipper and this morning’s Thrillist newsletter for New York. They wrote:
Evolution has provided animals with advanced methods of terrain mapping: dolphins orient themselves by echo location, and lemmings orient themselves by cliffs. Mapping out the waypoints of man’s existence: Outalot.com.
Read the entire review of Outalot on Thrillist.
No Comments » | Uncategorized | Tagged: blogs, news, NYC, press, reviews | Permalink
Posted by Joe
March 4, 2008
Here’s one little feature we put in as an experiment: KML for recent comments on Google Earth. If you have it installed, click on the 
icon under ‘Recent Comments‘ on Outalot and get a different view on what’s been happening lately:
P.S. I also wanted to give a big thanks to the people who have helped us get to launch. Your contributions were unbelievably valuable! Please keep the feedback coming!
We’ll continue to keep this blog updated with what we’re up to, so stay tuned for new features, company news, stats we find interesting, job postings, incriminating photos of celebrities at our wild dot com parties, etc.
1 Comment | Features, Google Earth, Product News | Permalink
Posted by Jesse
March 3, 2008
A few months ago, my partner and I traveled to Melbourne, Australia, his hometown, to visit family. While we were there, we began entering Melbourne-area restaurants into Outalot. Even though we say on the site that Outalot’s currently available for NYC area, it actually contains a lot of data for Melbourne, too. Try changing your location to “Melbourne, Vic, Australia” or use an Australian postal code (eg, “3040, Australia”). You can even enter an exact street address “184 Rathdowne Street, Carlton, Vic, Australia”.
No Comments » | Product News | Tagged: Melbourne | Permalink
Posted by Joe
