Bob, Justin and Michael (the three amigos making up our Product Team) have worked their tails off to bring you a very cool new feature that we’re very proud of. This feature is also brought to you in part by Maponics, a new CitySquares content partner.
In a nutshell, this new Neighborhood Map feature allows you to navigate through the Boston area using only a map. You can hop around the site from neighborhood to neighborhood using just a map! And now we show those neighborhood boundaries! You can see for yourself on CitySquares.com. Just click the “Navigate by Map” button.
This new Neighborhood Map feature is just our first release too. We’ve got some very clever ideas in the works, including more neighborhood boundaries and more user friendly features. It won’t be long now that we’ll be able to guess where you are too. So if you’re at, say, Angora Cafe in Kenmore Square, we’d like to be able to automatically know that and take you right to Kenmore Square on CitySquares. Ya know? OK, I tend to get a little excited about this stuff. More on that later though.
So we just wanted to announce this cool new feature to you all. Oh, and hey, we’re open to your suggestions and feedback too. Just shoot an email to Bob!
If you’re interested, please click here for the official press release on the CitySquares/Maponics partnership.
Welcome to the first post from the product team. We have been hard at work building new features for the site and we will be updating the blog weekly to keep you posted on the exciting things going on with the site. First and foremost I want to welcome Michael LeBarron as our new developer. He will be joining Justin Leider and myself to round out the product team and needless to say we will be working long hours to make the CitySquares.com experience grow and improve on a regular basis. Without further ado I would like to present you with the most recent roll out of features.
Faceted Search: This feature allows users to refine their search results after an initial keyword search. You may refine these results by distance, rating, reviews, location (city or neighborhood), category and alphabet. Not only does it make it easier to find what you are looking for but it also lets you explore other parts of the site with ease. Check out the screenshot below. We’ll be expanding this over the next few weeks as well, to include things like cuisine type, payment type, hours of operation, and more. Be on the lookout for that!
Favorite Neighborhood: Users can select a favorite neighborhood. Each time you login or return to the site, while still logged in, you’ll automatically go to your saved favorite neighborhood. The “Make This My Favorite ‘Hood!” button can be found on the top of all neighborhood home pages - see the South End, for example.
Send messages to businesses: Users can now send a business a message using the quick note feature in the business profile. On the profile page of our customers you will see a text area where you can send a question or inquiry directly to the business.
RSS: We now offer syndicated feeds that are available for businesses on our site organized by location (city or neighborhood) and category. Please grab a feed or two for your site or subscribe to get the latest business information from CitySquares in your blog reader.
Along with these features we are always improving things behind the scenes which includes making the site run more efficiently and fixing the small things that make your browsing experience more pleasurable.
Furthermore, we have some great features coming over the next couple of weeks including enhancing the homepage to display featured categories, reviews and deals from local merchants along with an amazing new mapping feature that lets you browse the cities and neighborhoods of Greater Boston in visual manner. We’re proud that CitySquares.com is your Boston destination site. Please tune in each week for more updates on the new things we have cooking in the oven.
If you have any feedback or ideas I’d love to hear from you! Just drop me an email or drop us a comment on this blog.
Join Us For Sangria & Tapas and a Chance to See Placido Domingo!
CitySquares invites you to celebrate Spring with an evening of sangria & tapas and a chance to win a luxurious night out on the town including tickets to see Placido Domingo!
Yesterday saw the official launch of Boston Pedicab, and CitySquares is the first Official Sponsor of 2008. As excited as we are to be a part of this we really see it as a milestone for Boston, a city that’s truly becoming increasingly green and is well known for being innovative and fun. Boston Pedicabs is a natural next step for such a city. We’re very proud of Ben Morris and our friends and neighbors at Boston Pedicab, and we’re grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such an event.
I’m in NYC this week attending the SES conference. I’m staying uptown at my friend Rich’s place. Last night, to thank him for putting me up (and putting up with me) I treated him to sushi and sake. Rich and I used to work together at Delphi.com, who later become Prospero.com, from 1999 thru 2001. Being that we share a professional background in the Internet (web 1.0?) we inevitably got to talking about CitySquares. As the conversation progressed and as we delved deeper into CitySquares, the business, he started to pick up on our themes about local businesses, mom-and-pops, Main Street USA. He expressed a strong interest and almost an intrigue in all of it, but not just from a business perspective, from a mission-oriented perspective - the Buy Local message. To begin the conversation I made sure to frame it in politically - I think that buying locally has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with just being a responsible citizen, no different than not polluting. He agreed.
After dinner we ended up a wine bar in the Upper West Wide called Wine & Roses. When we walked in, we were deep in the conversation, a friendly debate. We sat down at the bar right as I was trying to explain that consumer choice, in my opinion, is about three things:
Convenience: That is, what is closest to me or least interruptive to my day. Whether it’s a national chain or a local boutique, just give it to me quickly.
Budget: That is, I know how much I’m willing to pay, and no more. Whether it’s local, at a national brand, or online, I’m willing to take the time to find the best deal possible.
Community: I support my local mom-and-pop businesses, I believe they are essential to my community, and I value my relationship with them. I’m also aware of the economic benefits of buying locally.
It’s possible to have a hybrid of all three, of course, and most local businesses provide exactly that - convenience, affordability, and are actively part of their community. Redbones in Somerville’s Davis Square is a great example of this. They provide a quality product, excellent service, they are extremely convenient (they deliver this quality product on Redbones branded bicycles), and they are very active in the Somerville and Davis Square communities.
As we were discussing this and sat down at the bar, it happened to be next to the owner, Jennifer. I asked for her opinion on the topic and she more or less validated those three points with one major caveat - location. If you live in Manhattan, you have choices - lots and lots of choices. (But even that is changing, in a city like NY where you can’t walk three blocks without passing a national chain. It seems like the days of the local mom-and-pop are numbered in Manhattan.)
Anyway, the owner of this wine bar, Jennifer, explained that she was leaving for Arizona to see some family outside Mesa, and suggested that she is well aware that when she gets there she won’t have the same options and will certainly end up eating and buying at national chains. Now, she didn’t suggest this was a bad thing, or a good thing, but we all agreed that there is a reality in America where in some places consumers have choices about where to spend their money (the city) yet in others (Mesa, AZ) they just don’t.
Local businesses drive our national economy, this is a fact. They’re the oil in the nation’s economic engine. Local business is the best ingredient for any community’s success.
Anyway, to tie it all back together, and where we all seemed to agree last night, is on one simple but very important point - ultimately the consumers need to decide. That is very powerful. It doesn’t matter what political party you belong to, you surely still want the same things for your community, for your children, your family, and for your neighbors - your community. At CitySquares we really believe in this. It’s the mission behind the business. It all begins with the local businesses. Supporting your local and independent businesses is critical for your community’s sustainability.
To wrap it up, here is a brief illustration of what’s known as The Multiplier Effect, which is explained nicely in this brief video clip from an independent film called Independent America.
For those of you out there with Facebook accounts please also check out the CitySquares Page and feel free to Become a Fan! We’ll be adding quite a bit up there.
We recently released a contest to the subscribers of the CitySquares newsletter but we decided to let it be the first contest on our blog too. By the way, click here if you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter, which goes out monthly. Here is the excerpt from the newsletter:
Gaslight, a great new restaurant in Boston’s South End, is offering a free dinner to one lucky winner! Home to exquisite cuisine, great décor, and free parking! It’s true, free South End parking! But in addition to free parking Gaslight is offering A FREE DINNER if you can fill in the blank. The most creative answer will win. The owners of Gaslight will determine their favorite answer next week.
So here you go! Just fill in the blank: Parking in Boston is as easy as _________! (Click here to submit your response)
Be funny, intellectual, sarcastic, it’s up to you! The best response will receive a complementary dinner for two at Gaslight worth $100!
Now’s your chance, but this contest will end quickly! The response that the Aquitaine Group likes the best will win the dinner! (more…)
Here at CitySquares, we are engaged in a constant push to keep our site fresh, fun, and functional. With that goal in mind we are proud to announce the latest addition to our Citysquares enhanced customer profiles, Profile Videos!
CitySquares customers now have an option to have a low coast, professionally shot and edited video on their business profile page. These videos run about 60 seconds on average, and give potential customers a fantastic look into the venues, food, decor, and services of the local businesses that they are interested in. Other than that… they just plain look AWESOME!
Welcome to the Official CitySquares Company Blog! This is the start of something new. I’ve been blogging for quite a while on my own personal blog, Your Suspect, which is both about CitySquares and local search but really more about my perspectives and experiences as an entrepreneur. I’ve been blogging about such things since the earliest days of CitySquares but I’ve always wanted to give Bob, my cofounder, and other coworkers with a place to let their voices be heard from a company perspective, within the trenches.
So that’s what this is - the company blog. You’ll hear from me, probably most frequently, as well as Bob Leland (cofounder), Phillip Dias (sales manager), Justin Leider (web engineer), Kim Hillis and Jason Chehade (account managers) and others. They’ll have their own perspectives on CitySquares the company, and CitySquares.com the website. I look forward to their contributions!
Furthermore, we all really look forward to hearing from you - our audience, fans, partners, customers, industry insiders, bloggers, anyone. We encourage you to interact with us here and leave comments.
Ben Saren
Amber Killingsworth
Justin Leider
Michael LeBarron
bleland
kimmyh
Phillip
caitsully
juliecaroline
chehadej
