RecommendBox.com - Get Custom Recs from Folks You Know

A familiar situation: a friend recommends to you what he has dubbed the top Japanese restaurant in all of Texas, and lo and behold you agree. Yes, we all get recommendations from friends, some solicited, some not, but they do come to be handy nonetheless.

The question is, do you return the favor? Wouldn’t you like your very own personal recommendation network, a private ring of recs from all your friends? RecommendBox thinks so, and they’ve created exactly that. In essence it mimics a Michelin guide, or if you like, a Consumer Report, except that it’s all catered to you, for your taste, for your personality. This is a closed network, so you can only receive recs from friends within your network—that is, those who you’ve invited or who have invited you. Friends can solicit recommendations from you, and you can do the same. What you can recommend is limited by the categories/subcategories offered on site. You are required to register.

“Well we hope that RecommendBox will help in a few areas:
• People just aren't that good at sharing recommendations, even with the people closest to them. RecommendBox is designed to encourage friends to share recommendations by providing a simple and efficient way of doing so.
• You don't always know what your friends want recommendations for so RecommendBox let's users request recommendations from their friends.
• People tend to only recommend things to the people closest to them. RecommendBox hopes to change that and encourage people to share recommendation with more of their friends, and not just those closest to them.
• People often forget things that are recommended to them. RecommendBox acts as an archive.”

RecommendBox gives users a chance to leverage their personal network for customized recommendations. You aren’t given random recs from strangers via some algorithm. These are recommendations from people you know, from people you trust and care about. It also serves as a repository so you can archive all your recommendations for later use and you can even pass them on and expand your network.

This goes against the grain of the 2.0 ethos. It limits a person’s sphere of choice and discovery; RecommendBox is too closed. The beauty of all these open social networks is that you can browse and find new stuff based on similarity of profile. You’re in turn exposed to more content which simply won’t happen with RecommendBox

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