What it currently is
NearDeals allows you to submit stories and tag the story with a location. Other people can see the stories that have are near to them. Stories can also be voted up and commented on. We aim to encourage conversations to happen around stories.
How it works
- When you first come to NearDeals.com, the system will locate where you are and set the map for you( not implemented yet)
- The 10 newest Stories in the area will then be shown
- If you want to get the most popular stories or stories with the latest comments, simply click on the Popular/Comment Tab respectively.
- If you want to see stories from other places, simply move the map around and click on the Type of stories that you want (Newest/Popular/Comment)]
To submit a story you need to fill in 4 types of data.
- The title of the story
- A short(300 characters max) & accurate description of the story that will drive people to check out the story
- A link to the source of the story
- The location where the story occurred or where people interested in the story is.
Upcoming Features
- Auto Locating where you are
- Create a conversation with people around you
- A Name changed?
- A full fledge user profile with links to your blog/social network profiles
Why I Started NearDeals
The problem that I could see was that on a social news voting site, everyone saw the aggregate wisdom of the crowd. This could be good but if you ever tried posting a Singapore-focused article on Digg, it will never get to the front page. So NearDeals is trying to counter that by providing many views for many people. In the initial stages of NearDeals, your view of the story is a location based view. This means depending on where you are you will see a different set of news stories. In the future, I would expect everyone to see a different set of stories depending on his demographic, interest, location etc.
The Original Idea
First off if you are wondering about the name, it is because the site was originally intended to be a great deals/coupons for physical products site. This was what I self proposed as my Final Year Project.
Title: NEARDEALS - Local Coupon & Deals Search via Mobile Interface
A location based service for searching coupons and deals nearby to a current or pre-determined location.
Local Coupons provides an easy way to search for coupons and great deals. Coupon inventory and deals are indexed from the internet, socially contributed by users or sponsored by merchants.
Coupons and restaurants can be socially reviewed and rated by users via their phone or web interface.”
After thinking it through, I realize that location is actually not the hard part. The hard part is getting the data. Like a blog, a site without fresh content is next to useless. So I decide to get data the easiest way possible and that is by linking to content instead. Given that I am also interested in Location based Services since my first startup (Tagxe.com, a taxi ridesharing site, which closed because we couldn’t hit critical mass), I decided that I wanted to help surface content that was closer and more relevant to the user.
Contact Me
Click here to see my email: Shrtcard.com/wenhan