Company: Judy’s Book
Launched: July 2005
Location: Seattle, WA
What is it?
Judy’s Book is a site that allows people to write reviews of local businesses. It also has social networking features (adding friends, groups, etc.) to share reviews with a trust network. The idea is that people trust what their friends think more than advertising.
The reviews are easy to write, with lots of structure (rating, cost, pros/cons) and free text areas that will make searching easier (no tags though – they’ll add that soon enough). It is somewhat like DinnerBuzz, without the tagging and with more social networking. They don’t discuss in on the site, but they clearly use the yahoo mapping api or some other datebase for business search.
In their own words, “Judy’s Book was started in 2004 by Andy Sack and Chris DeVore. When Andy and his wife Alexa moved to Seattle, Alexa’s mom — Judy -– gave them her ‘little green book’, her personal take on the best service providers in Seattle. Andy and Alexa relied on Judy’s book for help and advice as they settled into their new city. When Chris and his wife Emily needed a handyman, Andy passed along a recommendation from Judy’s book and an idea was born: why not create a ‘little green book’ for busy parents everywhere? Judy’s Book is the result – offering local answers by parents, for parents. Join today and see for yourself!” Link
Here is a visual of a review:
To get the content rolling, Judy’s book is offering bribes. 
Five reviews gets you $5 at Starbucks, and 50 reviews + 10 friend invites gets you an iPod shuffle. Good idea.
Great site. But its another social networking tool to keep updated…and therefore will have some traction issues. The site does not provide RSS feeds for searches or tagging…They’ll realize the usefullness of that soon enough and add it. (Andy and Chris, if you read this, check out Dinnerbuzz and see the things they are doing correctly – it will be easy for you to add this functionality)
Founders:
Andy Sack
Chris DeVore
Relvant Links:
About
Search Engine Watch
Surfers Surf, Greg Yardley
Tags: judysbook, yellowpages, localsearch, search, reviews, profiles, techcrunch, web2.0, socialnetworks
We love feedback — all kinds. We believe that it’s what will make us and every other business better. Just have to listen to people. You’ll be happy to know that we’re already working on a number of your suggestions. Feel free to email me — I’d welcome a dialogue.
Thanks for noticing all the hard work.
Andy,
Andy, thank you for the comment. I love the site and I think the easiest
short term improvement is to see an RSS feed from all of my “friends” and
“groups” new reviews. The UI is very clean and I think your target audience will love it. I’ve already emailed my mom to show her.
Good luck and keep us posted as things progress.
Mike
I just received an email from Gabe Othman, the co-founder. I missed their RSS feeds (and they are adding more):
Mike,
I’m not sure if you’ve seen it, but we have a page on our site that lists out the available RSS feeds:
http://seattle....ok.com/rss.aspx
We are currently working on more feeds specific to members, which include friends and groups, as you suggested.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
-Gabe
A fantastic site, and brilliant effort. A great piece of work.+
Nothing notable going on. My life’s been generally dull today. So it goes. Not much on my mind to speak of.
I haven’t gotten anything done. Whatever. I just don’t have anything to say.
I have already enjoy your website, and it is so nice and cool. I will visit your website again. Thank you.
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I believe it is important to share my opinion and experiences. People use review sites to determine which businesses to patronize. Reviews help people make final decisions on where to go and what to buy. These sites empower people and enable them to make well-thought out decisions.
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