Bubbalon: Rating Startup in My Backyard
August 31, 2010
I’ve generally taken the train into Manhattan to discover the latest social media startups to come out of our local tech scene. Last week, I serendipitously came upon an intriguing company in my own extended New Jersey neighborhood. Located in Montclair, Bubbalon is a rating website that asks its community to rate the value of restaurants, TV shows, music, movies, politicians, ideas, and just about anything else in this whole wide world.
Sure, it is similar to other sites in this genre. Like Hot Potato, Hunch, and Foodspotting, Bubbalon banks on its members’ social altruism and cognitive surplus. Ratings of friends (as supplied by Facebook) also give users a benchmark on which to gauge judgments and potentially sway decisions. And there’s a Foursquare integration to boot.
Bubbalon, though, separates itself from other social sites in its emphasis on the emotional value assigned to rated objects— in other words, does it make you happy. Read more …
My ears are still ringing from a rant by Sam Lessin, Drop.io founder, as he went about trying to disprove intrinsic altruism and trust, and reclaim the commanding heights with neo-classical economics. More on this later, but it is curious position for a tech entrepreneur whose site is based on people uploading and sharing content for a cost of bupkis.