Social Raves

When we started the site, our goal was to help consumers arrive at better decisions about who to hire, where to go, what to do, etc. faster and cheaper. We wanted to take the social filtering we do all the time when confronted with such decisions whenever we ask our family and friends for recommendations. If everyone we knew made recommendations to each other on the site, then we would have created for ourselves a highly personalized reference source on wonderful local stuff. That is what the Recommendations tab is really all about: it's a reference source on great local brands and businesses built by our friends for us. So the key is to get as many of your family and friends raving and going even as you do the same.

For starters, we don't search the universe. When you look for local businesses on the site, our proprietary algorithm performs the search on a database that is solely just about local businesses, and those businesses that closely match your criteria are presented as results. The outcome of this process is simply better search because of the way the database has been enhanced with user-generated content as well as information supplied by business owners about their businesses. Local businesses do not "bid" for keywords to show up high in the search result page. Instead, keywords or tags such as brands, products, specialties, expertise, menus, etc. that are linked to individual business records which meet the user's search criteria ultimately drive the relevance and quality of the answers and, consequently, the overall search experience.

Each time you write a rave or review, we ask that you tag a business based on your own unique experience of the product, the service, or the overall customer experience provided by the business. By tagging businesses this way, you help other Ravers find and discover what they are looking for either through the search box, or through the popular tags on the main home page of the site. The most popular tags left by users are aggregated and shown on the main home page as an alternative way of finding and discovering local businesses.

If a business catches your interest, you can place a bookmark on it by clicking on the bookmark button that appears next to reviews or on the profile of the business. When you bookmark a business, that business is added into the Bookmarks tab within your profile for reference where you can read about the most recent raves and reviews written by Ravers on it.

Badges are icons or logos of the businesses that you rave about which you "wear" on your profile to let the world know about the great local brands and business you love.

When viewing certain pages within the site, you may see businesses clearly marked with the words "Sponsored Results". These are paid-for advertisements by local businesses that have chosen to differentiate themselves through more prominent placements in those pages. If you're a business owner looking to advertise on Social Raves, please click email advertise@socialraves.com.

Social Raves is currently operating in the Columbus, OH metropolitan area only. Please let us know your hometown by sending us an email at improve@socialraves.com and we'll let you know promptly as soon as we start raving there.

All raves are reviews, but not vice-versa. A review is considered a rave when the user commenting on the business gives that business a 9 or 10 rating in terms of likelihood of recommending that business to his or her family, friends, and social network.

The Social Raves rating system is anchored on a likely to recommend question in which users are asked to rate how likely they would be to recommend a business to a family, friend, or colleague on an 11-point scale from 0 to 10 with 10 being "extremely likely" and 0 being "extremely unlikely". If you rate a business a 9 or 10, then that means you highly recommend it. If you give it a rating of 7 or 8, then you don't really feel as strongly about it and, thus, are passively satisfied with it. Anything below 6 is treated as "do not recommend".

The rating system employed on the site is based on the book The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth written by loyalty expert Fred Reichheld. It is a metric that is calculated by taking the percentage of users who rate a business a 9 or 10, and subtracting from that the percentage of users who rate it from 0 to 6, on the question of how likely they would be to recommend the business to family, friends, colleagues, and those in their network. The higher the net promoter score, the better. Businesses with the most raving fans and, hence, the most enthusiastic customer referrals have scores of 50% or more.

If you're raving about a business because you want your friends to know about it and how great the business is, why would you want to be anonymous? Remember, our goal is to enable and empower users to build a personalized reference source on great local brands and businesses, and that just won't happen if we hide under some kind of veil to protect our identity. If you genuinely want to make the world a better place, then you've got to be real.

In the event of a bad experience with a business, we encourage users to contact the business before writing the review to clear the air, give the business owner a chance to address any shortcoming or mistake on their part, and the opportunity to make it right. When you do decide to go ahead and write that negative review after contacting the business, please be very specific and include as many facts and details regarding the experience including how your complaint was handled and addressed. Please do not, under any circumstance, make stuff up.

We do not allow the use of profanity or vulgar language on the site. We will take down reviews that violate the Terms of Service of the site immediately.

We do not see any need to use fancy algorithms to filter reviews on the site for users. Instead, we rely on your friends to do that for you. When viewing recommendations or the profile page of a business, for instance, we categorize reviews into two groups - friends and others - thereby putting you in the position to decide for yourself which raves or reviews to put more weight into.

Each time a rave or review you have written is published on the site, you are given the opportunity to share it with your friends and connections on the site via a private message. You also have the option of either manually or automatically sharing your raves or reviews on Facebook, which publishes the content you have written on your wall for all your friends on Facebook to see.

When you first connected via Facebook, you were asked whether you wanted to share your raves or reviews automatically with your friends in Facebook. If you answered yes to this question, then all your raves or reviews would be published automatically on your wall the minute you post them on the Social Raves site. If you answered no to the question, you can still share your content on your wall through ShareThis (see below).

ShareThis is one of the easiest ways to share your recommendations about local businesses with your family and friends. The ShareThis button appears each time you post a rave or review on the site, giving you the opportunity to spread the love about the business with a few clicks on your mouse. Through the ShareThis button, you can share on Twitter, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and a host of other social networking sites.

You can invite friends and family from your address book by clicking on the Invite Friends module found on your home page when you first log in to the site. You can also invite them by going into your account and clicking on Invite Friends. The invitation can either go out via email, or through Facebook. If and when friends accept your invitation, you become immediately connected to each other on the site.

You need to have a valid account to send information about a business via email to a friend. Simply hit the Send to Friend button found on the profile page of the business you wish to share, provide your friend's email address, and click Submit.

As a member of the site, you have several options for interacting with other users. You can friend others; become a fan by following them; send others a private message; or offer some compliments. Each of these actions can be taken through social icons found either in the user's profile, or underneath the user's photo that appears next to their raves or reviews.

The news feed that appears on your home page lets you know about all the actions recently taken by your friends on the site such as when they write a review; rave about a business; create a favorite list; bookmark a business; upload a photo of a business; follow another Raver; start a conversation; or attend an event. Through the feed, you are kept up to date on what's happening in your network.

When you become a fan of someone and start following him or her on the site, you get notified via your news feed each time that person raves about a business or writes a review.

When you're logged in on the site, simply click on the Welcome link with your name on the upper right corner of the page to access your account information. Once you're there, you can do a bunch of things including upload your user photo; build your profile to give other users a sense of what makes you tick; manage your email addresses; change your password; view and manage your connections; invite friends in Facebook or through your address book; as well as set your email and messaging preferences.

You can have more than one email address associated with your email account but you need to designate one as your primary. That is the address that you will use to log in to the site unless you choose to connect via Facebook. Your primary email address is also where important communication from us to you regarding your account will be sent.

Only your first name and the initial of your last name will be displayed on the site (e.g., Robert B.), together with your location that is defined by your zip code. If you're not logged in through Facebook, we encourage you to use your real name so your friends can find and connect with you and, more importantly, benefit from your raves, reviews, and experiences ... and vice-versa.

In the event that you wish to cut off certain ties or severe connections with other users on the site, you can do so by going to the View and Manage Friends module on your account, choose which friends to remove, and hit the Remove button. The result is immediate and users you remove as friends will not be notified of such action. You can initiate the process of reconnecting at your option later on, while they can do the same.

By default, we will notify you via email whenever someone friends you or accepts your friend invitation. We will also notify you when you receive private messages or compliments from other Ravers. When a business owner posts a public comment on your rave or review, we will also notify you. When someone becomes a fan and starts following you, you will also get notified. Of course, you can modify these settings at any time by going into your account,

If you really want your friends, family, and everyone in your network to benefit from your experiences with great local brands and businesses, then there is no reason to have multiple accounts. You have to be who you are and stand by what you write. So the short answer to this question is, users are not allowed to have multiple accounts. If we see that alias accounts are being used, we reserve the right to delete those accounts for the benefit of the raving community.

The site's Privacy Policy is located here. Please take a moment to read it if you haven't. It is to your benefit to understand what it is so you can better use the site.

If you wish to stop raving, please send an email to improve@socialraves.com. In your email, please be so kind as to tell us why you are terminating your membership and, more importantly, how we can improve for the future.

Connecting through your Facebook account is the easiest and most convenient way for you to access the full features of the website. When you click on the Facebook icon located at the upper right corner of the site, you will be asked to log in to your Facebook account and once Facebook has verified that account, you will be given total access immediately using your Facebook credentials (i.e., your name, email address, and zip code).

We do not collect or retain anything from your Facebook account other than your credentials, that is your name, email address, and zip code.

Each time you rave about a business or write a review, you have the option to either automatically or manually share your written feedback about that business with your friends on Facebook by allowing Social Raves to publish a snippet of that rave or review on your wall. That piece of content links back to the site where your friends can read your complete review and learn more about the business.

Automatically publishing your raves or reviews on your wall will help generate awareness behind the service that Social Raves provides and encourage your friends to participate in making this world a better place. You can also invite them through the Manage Your Account module on the site. When you're logged in on the site, simply click on the Welcome link with your name on the upper right corner of the page to access your account information. When you invite your Facebook friends, your invitation will appear under Requests in their Facebook home page.