A: Good question – we get it a lot! We rank businesses in a very different way than other search directories out there because we display search results not only by proximity to you, but by social relevance, too.

What do we mean by social relevance? Well, if you have a few friends on AlikeList and you search for a dentist near San Jose, CA, the dentists listed at the top of your search results will be your friends’ recommended dentists. Under those will be recommendations from your friends-of-friends and under those, recommendations from all members. All the rest of the directory listings for dentists are displayed at the bottom. So, search ranking is really based on your friends and their trusted businesses.

I think a “search scenario” will help illustrate this point further.

Scenario: A college professor and a college student go on AlikeList and search for an Italian restaurant in their town. The college professor sees recommendations from his intellectual friends for high-class Italian restaurants with extensive wine selections at the top of his search results. The college student sees recommendations from her frugal, easy-going friends for nearby pizza and pasta places.

Thus, we don’t rank businesses – your social circle does.

Today we’re happy to announce that you can now post Shares and Asks directly to your Facebook wall. By tapping into the power of the world's biggest social network we can help you get trusted word of mouth recommendations from your friends quicker than ever before!

You can also join and sign in using Facebook Connect. Just click “Connect with Facebook” to start sharing your favorite businesses with Facebook friends, regardless of whether they’re AlikeList members or not.

Sharing more than photos with Facebook friends

It's easy to share a business with friends on AlikeList. Beneath each business listing on AlikeList you'll see a Share link. Once you click, you’ll be asked if you want to publish your Share to your Facebook wall. Click “Accept” and you’re done!

Within seconds, your Share — along with any message you want to add — is posted to Facebook. It's a cool way to help your friends discover new restaurants, retailers, professionals and other businesses you like.

Get a little help from friends

Let’s say you’re in need of a plumber, but when you search for one on AlikeList, no recommendations from friends come up. By easily leveraging the relationships you have on Facebook, you’ll be able to get the recommendations you need — quickly!

Here’s how you do it: Click the Ask friends tab at the top of your AlikeList homepage and you'll see that you can ask friends via email, AlikeList mail, or by asking your friends on Facebook. Just like Sharing, your question is posted to your Wall and will appear on your friends’ News Feeds so they can give you a quick answer.

The power of Asking friends on Facebook is incredible. Within an hour of asking for a recommendation, I already had two solid referrals from people I know and trust!

By connecting with your friends on Facebook, AlikeList lets you tap into the wisdom of your social network to solve life's daily problems. It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Come try it out!

“This is great … we moved a few month ago and it’s always hard to find new businesses where you live, after you had it all figured out before you moved. This site takes the guess work out of [finding] the services that you need for your house.”

“With the economy the way it is, I made a promise to try and shop at local businesses more. The difficulty is, of course, finding the right ones in the area.
I like that this website is a compiling of recommendations from people in your local area.”

“I love getting recommendations by word-of-mouth! This way I don’t have to look through the yellow pages randomly picking something based on how I like the ad.”

“This is a great website to condense all your favorite places. How cool to be able to connect with friends and not have to keep asking them “what was the name of that restaurant you liked so much?”

Well there it is! If you have any feedback for us (good or bad), feel free to email us at feedback@alikelist.com.

All three of us agreed that today’s local offerings were falling short of making life simpler… It’s easy to get overwhelmed with too much information, too many local choices and too many reviews to read from people we don’t know or trust.

We set out to build AlikeList, a place where like-minded individuals and groups of people can share and find trusted local recommendations through word-of-mouth. Just like they do offline, only better because we make these local recommendations searchable, available 24 x 7, and accessible from anywhere.

Now, six months later, the AlikeList staff is finding trusted local businesses through AlikeList almost every day. Since most staff members are friends with each other on alikelist.com, we each have at least 30 AlikeList friends. That creates an incredibly valuable database of recommendations from

Mission Ranch in Carmel, CA

people we actually trust. No more sifting through reviews or random business listings for us!

With the constant chaos of a start-up, and the coming and going of off-site employees, we can all truly see and experience the value of AlikeList.

Take Jeff, our Director of Business Operations, for example. He was in need of two new mattresses for his growing daughters. He looked on AlikeList and saw that our Director of Social Marketing was a friend of Jim, the manager at Mancini’s Sleepworld in Saratoga, CA and highly recommended the store. So Jeff put it on his TryList, and on the same day went into the store and got a great deal on two top-notch mattresses – for two happy daughters at home.

Last weekend, I was heading down to Carmel, CA and on Friday afternoon, realized I didn’t have a clue what to do there. I sent out an Ask to 15 people, asking them to recommend a good place to get a drink. Within an hour, I had 10 responses. One of the best ones said to get a drink at Clint Eastwood’s Mission Ranch, on the back deck, during sunset if possible. That kind of recommendation would have taken me hours of researching online to find – and even then I wouldn’t have trusted it because it would have come from a complete stranger.

For the AlikeList staff, it’s really nice to know that whenever we need anything local – a restaurant, chiropractor, auto mechanic – we know exactly where to look. We don’t even have to bother asking one another, which is good because we’re always so busy! (In fact, I should get back to work…)

News: Get real-time news updates like a California earthquake or the Hudson plane crash before there’s a peep about it in the media.

Entertainment: It’s not stalking – it’s following! Follow your favorite movie stars, food critics, athletes and more to get an inside glimpse of what they’re like when they aren’t being chased by paparazzi.

Networking: Find people who like peanut-butter and pickle sandwiches just like you! And keep tabs on business contacts to see what conferences they’ll be attending and any new ventures they’re tackling.

Deals and discounts: Follow your favorite hotels, airlines, stores, bars and more because they often tweet special offers just for their Twitter followers.

Knowledge of the masses: Have a question? Forget searching for the answer on Google. Just type in (for example), “Do fish hiccup?,” to get an immediate response from your friends and followers.

Find a job: Here’s some proof that this actually works – A few months ago, our future Director of Social Marketing decided to search for a Sr. Social Marketing position within her own playground – Twitter.

“I used Twitter to discover social media panels and events to meet the kind of people I like to know and work with. Dave Allen of Pampelmoose (@pampelmoose) spoke at an HP social media panel and SF Music Tech (#sfmusictech). He introduced me to ‘Frosty’ from HP (@frostola), who didn’t have an exact date for an opening on his team, but referred me to a blogger/Ad exec/event producer with interesting tweets (@britopian). Brito’s blog listed a few great opportunities exactly in the space I wanted to be in and a couple of weeks later, I happily joined AlikeList as the new Director of Social Marketing. I heart Twitter.”

RT this if your found it helpful!

We’re all consumers. On any given day, we might go out for lunch, get the oil checked or buy a friend a birthday gift. We want to know that what we’re spending our money on is worth it (and that’s what AlikeList is for!) But in addition to AlikeList, there are lots of helpful sites out there that can help you make wise decisions when buying products or services, such as:

Better Business Bureau (BBB)

http://www.bbb.org/ : Find BBB Accredited Businesses, access reports on specific businesses or (knock on wood) file a complaint.

Diamond Certified

http://diamondcertified.com : Use this site to find only the highest quality contractors and service providers in the SF Bay Area.

Consumer Reports

http://www.consumerreports.org : Read reviews of consumer products, find deals and promotions for what you’re looking for and stay up-to-date on the newest products.

CNET

http://reviews.cnet.com/ : When it comes to quality reviews of electronics and software, this is the place to go. You get the editor’s rating and the average user’s rating, too.

UrbanSpoon

http://www.urbanspoon.com : Like CNET, UrbanSpoon gives your restaurant reviews from “critics, food bloggers and friends,” so you can decide whom to believe!

TripAdvisor

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ : Before travelling, make sure the expensive resort you’ll be staying at is worth its price. And find some fun things to do while you’re there, too.

Now that we’ve given you some helpful tips, give us some! We’re always trying to improve AlikeList to make it more useful for we consumers, and the best way to do that is to communicate! So don’t be shy – let us know what you think at feedback@alikelist.com

March: The founders move into an office space in Sunnyvale, CA and hire the first team members

April: The spec for Alpha2 is completed based on user feedback. We improve search, browsing and social relevance functionality, too. More talented folks are hired.

June: Lots of product-testing and bug-fixing to get the site ready for the Beta launch
-    But there’s still time to play with the Alpha version from remote locales! AlikeList’s growing staff members hit popular vacation spots such as Seattle and Tahoe.

July: “Soft” launch: AlikeList Beta goes live!! The staff invites all their friends and family to join and try

August: We invite 500,000 people to check out and provide feedback on AlikeList via BzzAgent. We garner extremely valuable feedback for next version.
-    AlikeList is busting at the seams with people! We move in to a bigger office space

September: Second Beta version launches
-    Inspired by user feedback and our own determination to make the site more intuitive, fast and helpful, we start working on a new layout and features for the site

October: Mark Law (from AOL-owned MapQuest) and lots of other really talented product design, development and engineering people join us!

November: Company party at Strike Bowling Alley – a brief break in the sprint to complete development on V1.0 before the Holidays
-    More product-testing. AlikeList staff work around the clock to get the site ready for it’s big Dec. Launch

December: Version 1.0 launches!
-    We’re excited to get some rave reviews and feedback after announcing our funding, new site enhancements & the addition of Mark Law and team members.
(Read reviews in VentureBeat, Screenwerk, Local Onliner and more here.)

Looking into 2010:
We hope to make the site even better! As always, user feedback will help us make further refinements based on the real life usage of AlikeList. And we’ll add new functionalities to help people simplify their daily lives!

- More user-friendly interface: Think “iTunes playlist meets AlikeList.” Easily create custom LikeLists for different uses (e.g., Fix It List, Sushi List, even “PlayList” for your favorite playgrounds perhaps) that contain narrowly categorized businesses based on any criteria you dream of.

- ProSites: Short for “Promotional Sites,” ProSites are free mini- sites where businesses add and update helpful information about their business – all they have to do is claim their listing. And that’s not all! Businesses can also create Instant Offers and messages for customers, monitor current and prospective client bases, and more.

- Community Home Pages: Your current home page on steroids! Now you can see the most-Liked and newly-Liked businesses where you live or work, in real-time, to help you stay in-the-know!

- Easier Search by Category & Sort buttons so you find exactly what you’re looking for – quickly.

Bottom line:

AlikeList is easier yet more useful than ever. Now you can find, save, share and organize your Likes with ease. Plus, more businesses claiming their ProSites means more information and special deals for you!

We hope you like it and invite all your friends to AlikeList, —the more friends you have, the more trusted business recommendations you’ll get.

BTW, since we’ve added a lot of new functions, please don’t hesitate to share your feedback with us at feedback@alikelist.com.

For my family, vacations are an exercise in exploration. We love to go on adventures and try new places, and our winter vacation in 2006 was no different. We were visiting my parents in Phoenix, AZ and wanted to take a few days with the kids to go someplace new.

The Enchantment Resort nestled in the Sedona canyon.

I had called my friend Jim Delli Santi who I knew had spent some time in the Phoenix area recently and he recommended the Enchantment Resort in Sedona. The suggestion fit the bill for our family perfectly: the Enchantment Resort offers a cool par-3 golf course, helicopter tours(the concierge suggested Maverick Airstar) and the many quaint shops in Sedona. Something for everyone.

We’re checking out Sedona one afternoon and I realize I had not made dinner reservations for that evening. We’re in the mood for American-style food at a nice restaurant, but one that isn’t too upscale (our sons hate upscale restaurants). So I call Jim again and ask him for a restaurant recommendation. Jim immediately comes up with the perfect recommendation – Rene at Tlaquepaque. Nice restaurant, French and American cuisine and family friendly.

Jim and I begin to talk about the process of getting recommendations from those we trust and realize how valuable it would be if recommendations from trusted friends were online and accessible 24×7. Better yet would be if they were accessible from your computer and mobile devices while you travel. Additionally, what if we could connect with businesses to make a reservation, and they could contact us too? And what if we could easily refer our favorite businesses to our friends? The possibilities just kept coming.

It also dawned on me that my entire trip had been planned via trusted word-of-mouth recommendations. Referrals from my parents, the concierge at the hotel and Jim. At that moment our mission was clear: we had to help people get trusted recommendations anywhere at anytime.

Michael McConachie