i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

Marti Hearst's discussion of social search in the reading for 11/29 reminded me of Hotpot, which Google announced about a week and a half ago.  At its most basic, the feature is essentially the company's own twist on Yelp: an opportunity for people to share their opinions of restaurants and other local businesses.  One interesting departure, however, is Hotpot's use of a six star rating scale. Six stars signifies "best ever", but users are only allowed to bestow ten of these six star ratings.    

 Info 202 Blog Post 1, "Google Social Search Screws Up"
2010Sep11
Walter Koning

Google Social Search launched near the close of 2009.  Since then the features have been refined but one feature is causing grief for users.