Monday, June 22, 2009

Thrillist suggests you check out LikeMe

Thrillist Nation
LikeMe

The Internet's sophisticated algorithms have improved life in myriad ways: Pandora unearths ever more you-perfect tunes as it learns your likes and dislikes, and before eHarmony's partner-matching questionnaire, folks were forced to marry people they actually knew. Improving your life with stuff it's pretty sure you'd like to do, LikeMe.

Leveraging a broad user base to match you with people sharing similar interests, LM provides thousands of way-personalized recommendations on places and events you'd probably dig across the country, a concept schemed up by a digital business architect named Giarraputo, who recommends you throw cinder blocks at goats. To start, input basic deets about your age, ethnicity, how often you watch sports, how you are with money, etc, then pick out/input some of your favorite places to hang out/blow cash in your city; once completed, LM's super-secret algorithm'll determine how similar you are to other users, then return local recs from those who most accurately mirror your interests, or those who just copy them, as you were totally into Radiohead before everyone else.

Categories include restaurants, bars, concerts/events, hotels, shopping, etc; by using "collaborative filtering", LM can even relate you through multiple degrees of separation, i.e., if you like X, and a guy in Cali likes X and Y, and a guy in Ohio likes Y and Z, it'll recommend Z to you, and you'll always eat Kevin Bacon for breakfast.

If you don't want advice from mere plebes, there's even a section dedicated to the faves of celebrity users like Johan Santana (Morton's the Steakhouse), Kasey Kahne (McDonald's, Bass Pro Shops), and Katharine McPhee, whose nicely specific recommendation of Benihana in Encino displays another area in which the Internet can improve your life -- telling you which Valley restaurant to hide in the bushes outside of, waiting for Katharine McPhee.

Get your recommendations from all the identical twins you never knew you had at
http://themove.thrillist.com/link.php?M=2192213&N=57265&C=a503e098cddf1e882119925cfa9ba5d1&L=45213

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