Last fall, Todd Myers, a former Googler and a self-proclaimed foodie, was reading through Yelp reviews of local restaurants and getting increasingly frustrated with the specificity of the experiences.
“There are so many personal stories,” Myers told BostInno of the reviews. “But all you really want to know are the basic takeaways.” In order to get those helpful snippets of information, however, a user has to skim through 20 or 30 past patrons’ reviews, argued Myers.
But what if reviews were stripped down to their basic elements in the first place?
Myers seeks to solve that problem with Tally, a social web application designed to capture the crowd’s opinion on virtually any subject by allowing the major themes to rise to the top.
Rather than having people wax poetic on a given topic, Tally limits users to 140-characters, which keeps the reviews to the point. However, people can post as many times as they want under a category, and classify their comments under "The Good" or "The Bad." In reddit style, users then up-vote community posts that they agree with, bringing the most recognized, and thus most relevant, opinions to the forefront.
The result: An easily digestible, digital pros and cons list that makes it super simple to share opinions.
“It’s as if you asked everyone on the Internet a question, and people could just raise their hand,” explained Myers.
Myers isn’t a stranger to the Hub’s innovation ecosystem. Prior to Google, he worked at SonicBids, a Boston social music marketing and online gig booking company that was acquired in 2013. The experience whet his palette for startups, inspiring him to go for his MBA at University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. And after a nearly two-year stint at Google, Myers broke out on his own in January 2014 to start Tally.
Since Tally’s launch in July, the startup has been focusing on building out the site’s list of restaurant reviews. While Tally is open to all, Myers has mobilized 40 Bostonians who are just as hungry for delicious meals as they are innovative tech to start creating content on the site. More than 50 local restaurants, including Toro, The Tip Tap Room and Myers + Chang, are currently reviewed on Tally, organized by neighborhood.
“It’s the one-percent rule,” Myers posited, explaining that, only one percent of a given website’s users actually add to new content on average. Tally’s voting system and limited-character blurbs, however, aims to reduce the friction for the other 99 percent to get on board, giving the site an edge.
Another differentiating factor lies in its plan to monetize. A harsh review is often enough to take a restaurant’s foot traffic from a stampede to a trickle. Leveraging that, Tally plans on charging eateries for the chance to personally respond to negative reviews. The owner or chef would be able to personally apologize to the guest or even offer him or her a special offer, Myers explained.
But restaurants are just the beginning. Myers foresees Tally applying to other topics of conversation, too, as a way to easily gage public opinion. At the moment, however, the three-person team is focused on deepening its content in Boston’s ever-growing restaurant scene and bringing users on board.
So, got an opinion to share? Post a comment below, or check out Tally here.
