"Where should I go tonight?" It's an ageless question most Millennials are faced with on a weekly, if not daily basis. Yet there are currently no apps that offer users real-time insights into the venues around them.
Local discovery apps like Yelp and Foursquare, which have been around since 2004 and 2009, respectively, have not evolved with the changing mobile landscape, and have seen their valuations decline drastically over the past few years. Both platforms rely heavily on reviews, which are often months old and no longer relevant, to rate and rank venues; but it's become clear that review-based platforms are untrustworthy to Millennials who are looking for a seamless and reliable way to discover places and events around them.
What most don't realize is the information happens to be out there already. Tens of millions of photos and videos are uploaded to social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook daily. Aggregating this content could help you figure out where to go on any given night in just a few seconds.
An exciting new social app, Postcard, promises to do just that for the city of New York. Instead of using reviews, Postcard crowdsources live social media activity to display the hottest bars, clubs, restaurants, and events in your area, and lets users tap into the venue to see all the latest pictures and videos shared, allowing them to be confident in their choice.
As Danny Matthews, Postcard's Co-founder & CEO explains, "Social media fails at providing users with actionable information because the content is not optimally sorted and delivered. Postcard changes that by displaying content in a way that allows users to make an informed decision about where to go in real time."
In addition to the heatmap component, Postcard also offers a user-to-user feature that allows you to send friends pictures from venues in the form of postcards, complete with the "Greetings From" format. The catch? The content type is it disappears when you leave venue, so all content is actually shared and viewed in real-time.
It's clear that New York City is excited about Postcard's ability to make navigating the city's social scene easy and fun. The platform is currently in beta with thirty thousand users and plans to launch in NYC in early 2017. After launching, the company plans to expand to other cities across the US.
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