Big ups to David Berkowitz for his blog post “Checking In, Checking Out - A Memoir of Mobile Social App Addiction.” Comparing the pool of location-based apps to celebrity personalities, he proclaims using buzzd is like hanging with Lindsay Lohan, except far safer “since you probably won’t wind up in a rehab clinic by sunrise.”
Thanks TechCrunch! They broke the news of our brand spankin’ new Android app, which can be found by searching for buzzd in Android Market OR in the Verizon V Cast tab on the Market homepage. The app is currently only available for OS 2.0.
Thanks to all you loyal buzzd users who gave incredible feedback on our first full iPhone app. You’ll see that your comments are reflected in this brand new version. Here are the sweet new features in buzzd 2.1.1.
* Use the “buzzdmeter” tab or the map to see places with the most buzz (real-time posts from Twitter, buzzd & more) IN YOUR CITY, your neighborhood, within walking distance or the block you’re standing on.
* Sort the “buzzdmeter” by category of places - bars/clubs, restaurants, other venues
* Easily find and search for places around you in the NEARBY tab, so you can easily post a buzz wherever you are
* Socialize! See where others have posted a buzz in the feed section, view photos and profiles in the FEED tab.
buzzd is more than a city guide. It can be an super efficient tool for letting your crew know what’s going on at bar, club, restaurant or event at any particular moment. Let’s say a sick DJ just went on and you want more of your friends to come, you can send all of them a quick review and venue details in one click. When you post a real-time review or update from a place (the feature is called “buzz it”), you have the option to broadcast the buzz to your friends who are located within 2 miles of your location. The buzz is sent to them instantly via SMS or email, based on their notification settings.
It’s very easy to connect with your friends on buzzd. You can easily import your email address book from GMail, Yahoo, AOL & more. Here’s how to add your friends to your buzzd crew.
Buzzd members, we’ve got a new feature for you. Now you can automatically and instantly post your buzzes to your facebook wall. It’s a great way to keep your Facebook contingency up to date about the best (and worst) bars, clubs & restaurants you’ve been to. To start posting your buzzes to Facebook, all you need to do is connect your buzzd account to Facebook, using Facebook Connect at http://buzzd.com/profile/connect. Here’s how…
This week we released an update to buzzd that was more than shiny new features; although we had those too. Our iPhone app hit store shelves last week and brought a rush of new people to buzzd. We’re really happy about that but it put a lot more strain on our servers. We needed to make some big changes under the hood to fasterize the buzz for everyone.
To speed things up we refactored core search indexes from vertically partitioned master-slave architecture into a fully sharded IDDB infrastructure with unrelated data partitioned across multiple storage and write nodes.
Wait. What?
We didn’t actually do that but we did add a couple of hampsters to the server farm. This will make the iPhone buzzmeter faster, searches will be faster, buzzing will be faster, and my girlfriend will get ready to go out faster. Well maybe not that last part. But everything on buzzd is gonna be zippy.
Oh yeah. One more thing.
We’ve added private messaging to the website. Now verified members can message anyone else on buzzd. You can also choose to receive messages by email or SMS.
Now, there’s an app on the iPhone for getting buzzd (www.buzzd.com). Download it in iTunes or by clicking here www.buzzd.com/iphone.
The spankin’ new buzzd app shows you real-time activity (”the buzz”) at bars, clubs & restaurants around you. And not only does it show posts from buzzd users, but we now bring in updates from Twitter users at a specific bar, club or restaurant. In fact, we realized finding where to go on Twitter can be a mess sometimes, so the new app’s signature feature is the “buzzmeter” which ranks the nearby places by the most posts (or “buzz”). Therefore you know how hot a place is right now.
You’ll also instantly know the hottest parties, the best happy hours, bands & DJs performing now, celebrity sightings, venue offers & specials, and so much more!
Of course, you too can post the buzz wherever you are and then seamlessly broadcast to your friends AND to your Twitter followers if you have an account (Quick tip: you can also re-tweet & reply to tweets straight from the buzzd app)
The new buzzd iPhone app works best in the following cities (but definitely not limited to): New York, NY; San Francisco, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; Chicago, IL; Toronto, ON; Boston, MA; San Jose, CA; Las Vegas, NV; Philadelphia, PA; Washington; DC; Austin, TX; Brooklyn, NY; San Diego, CA; Seattle, WA; Dallas, TX; Denver, CO; Atlanta, GA; Montreal, QC; New Orleans, LA.