Google mixes local and social reviews in Hotpot

From CNET News.com: If at first, second, and third you don't succeed, try, try again.

Google is taking another crack at a social service, this time with Hotpot, a tool designed to capture local knowledge and recommend establishments such as restaurants or stores you might want to visit. Google unveiled an early version of Hotpot in a blog post yesterday, and I think it's got some attributes that could help it achieve some modest success.

"With Hotpot, we're making local search results for places on Google more personal, relevant, and trustworthy," product manager Lior Ron said, calling the service a "local recommendation engine powered by you and your friends."

As with many attempts to make something useful and commercially relevant out of social networking, Hotpot attempts to convert the recommendations of your connections into advice for you. Your own recommendations and warnings will be used as signals to determine which establishments are presented to your friends when they search--and, of course, vice versa.

So yes, that means if Hotpot attains any level of success, you'll be enduring yet another round of invitations from your online connections. I just inflicted some on my own friends and family in an attempt to try out Hotpot, and it pained me to do so.

But here's a nice thing about Hotpot: you can play it in solitaire mode, too, so to speak.

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