It’s all a matter of perspective

User feedback is very important.  It helps give the Zipingo team plenty of perspective about our product that sometimes we miss from our lavish offices (well, cozy little combined space) in San Diego.

Having just gone on a business trip to Boston it reinforced to me how important the user community is to Zipingo.  I’ve witnessed the pain of not having maps and directions on Zipingo.  I’ve had the pain of not being able to find places I’ve wanted to go to because of the lack of keyword searching (i.e. restaurant, lobster).  These were all feedback items from users.  I’ve really never traveled so I really haven’t used Zipingo as a traveler.  I haven’t needed these features until this week.  This is why user feedback is so important; we are a small team and only have so many experiences between us all.  The user community uses the site in many ways we haven’t thought of and have already helped shape the direction of the site.

When we first released we didn’t have a way to see recent ratings in your area.  Honestly, we didn’t even think about it.  When the site first went live, the feedback from users read like “Hey I want to see what people are rating in my area”.  The team thought, “why would people just want to read random ratings?”  When we got a chance to start using the site after the release we said “Wouldn’t it be nice to see what other people are rating in my area”.  We quickly added that functionality.  The moral of the story is the best feedback is always from our users.  It makes sense that if someone is using our site, they would know best what features they are looking for, wouldn’t they?  That is why we value feedback, respond to feedback and most importantly act on feedback.  In the next few months you will start to see the remaining functionality you have asked for appear on the site.  I would like to thank you all for the feedback, and thank you for sticking with Zipingo while we work out the bugs and grow the user community.

With my thanks I leave you with 10 Things I learned about Boston.  I really liked my visit and hope I get to come back someday (without all the meetings).

1. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is as good as advertised, probably better.  “Symphonie fantastique” by Berloiz was outstanding.
2. A certain online mapping system does not know how to give directions from the airport to my hotel.
3. The Boston Symphony Orchestra box office does not know how to give directions to the Symphony.
4. There is not a shopping center every other exit of the expressway like there is in California.
5. The memory of Red Sox’s fans is getting worse.  All you heard about for years was about the last time the Red Sox won the World Series in 1918 and everyone kept talking about when it would happen again, but everyone must have forgot about the 2004 World Series win because they kept replaying it in my hotel room to remind people of it.
6. Internet access must be more valuable in Boston, my hotel charged $10 a night for it.
7. My hotel TV must put out terrific sound and a terrific picture when it plays movies because the hotel was asking $12 per movie.
8. The official animal of Boston must be the lobster because I saw them all over the airport.  Lobster stuffed animals, lobster T-shirts, lobster pencils, lobster pens and even take home frozen lobster.
9. There must be a problem with pedestrians getting run over in Boston.  Almost every crosswalk I passed had a sign that read “State Law, Stop for Pedestrians in Crosswalk.”  There is probably something I’m missing here, but I thought this was common knowledge.
10. The people are as nice as any place.  I love the accents.  I’ve never met anyone with one before.  Well everyone was nice except for the guy who called me a “dumb New Yorker” because I didn’t know you were supposed to take a ticket when you get on the turnpike.  I only have one thing to say to this guy, I’m a dumb Californian.  It was a rental car, that’s why it had New York license plates.

-DM