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Comment by josephjrobison | Hacker News Reader

Awesome job! I agree with your opinion on Yelp being imperfect for specific tastes, since it's all aggregate. What's your plan for gaining users, and getting to that critical mass?

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Thanks! Learning how to grow a product is part of the next steps for me. Figuring out how to provide value before a user has a ton of friends on the site is important. One thought I've had is making featured lists from notable food critics for example.

Awesome job finishing the site! On a personal note I spend a lot of time eating out, especially at really great restaurants (5 star) all over Miami and Fort Lauderdale, FL. I would love to start adding restaurants, comments, etc. to this app but there is no real "push" for me to do that. Maybe some gamification? Points/rewards/mentions/etc. so that I feel like i'm gaining something by contributing? Just a thought. There may be other people who feel the same way

That is an excellent point and something I've been thinking about as well. One thought I've had is adding some sort of rating system where people who are active on the site get promoted as 'Awesome people who have good taste' (working title). I'm also thinking about ways to make the site more useful on a personal level.

Hi Jennifer, I really like the site, but I'm wondering if there is any way to add more restaurants?

Santa Barbara has a lot of great places, but I'm only seeing a few to choose from :)

There is a way to add restaurants! Under the main search field in the header is a link to Search for a Restaurant. Enter the name of a restaurant and the location and YumHacker will return a list of possible matches. Endorsing a restaurant and it will be added to the database.

ah perfect, I thought I had tried that, but I guess not :) Thanks!

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