My review of n49.ca | A site for local business reviews

I recently had the opportunity to vist the n49 booth at SES Toronto a week ago. Before I get into talking about the product I would like to mention the friendliness of the n49 team. Specifically, Tina A and just the video guy (I lost his business card, but he knows who he is). They richly informed me of the service that they are offering but in a non-salesman like fashion. I always appreciate people talking passionately about a product that they believe in.

What is n49.ca?

(As described on their site)

n49 is about sharing thoughts, opinions and experiences about local businesses. n49 allows you find and review local businesses, make friends with other n49ers, and create and share your personal business directory. n49ers rate and review restaurants, nightclubs, auto mechanics, spas, and just about anything else!

Businesses generating buzz- those most reviewed and favoured by members- find themselves comfortably at the top of search results. n49 lets you decide what the best businesses in your area are!

Features that the site has

Search for local businesses, and friends.

Rate a review on a system of 5 stars.

Review a local business.

Listyour business on n49 adding all types of media to it such as video, text, blogs etc.

You can think of it as a Canadian version of Yelp.

Business Model

I believe n49 makes money on sponsored listings that are on the top of search results.

My two cents

1) I don't get the name n49? It doesn't describe anything about what the business does: local business reviews.

2) I noticed by looking at profiles, that many people don't have any friends. A cool feature that they may want to add is a contact importer where someone can enter their gmail or yahoo email and see what friends are on the site already. Maybe I have a couple friends on the site and I don't know?

3) I noticed a bug in the software. When I received my notification e-mail it said my "  Your username is: " without printing my username.  :)

4) It's impressive that n49 donates $1 for every review you make on the site. Based on their revenues, I wonder if that would be hard to scale. Setting expectations at the beginning of the service is very important and could be detrimental. Good job with the charity feature!

5) I find it weird that in a local review site, you have the ability to put your relationship status. Local review business and dating site perhaps?

The n49 team definitely has put together a great service for people looking for reviews of local businesses around them. Let's hope it's a success!

My page is at http://ragobeer.n49.ca . If anyone decides to check out the service, look me up! (since I have no friends that I'm aware of :) )