Localized Bar and Hotspot Rating App Launches in Arlington
ROODLE, a locally curated bar and nightclub rating app aimed at the social set ages 18-40 launched this week in Arlington, VA. The app is built on the functionality to rate, based on predetermined criteria, a bar, restaurant or club and find the social setting most attractive to you for your night out. Truly setting ROODLE apart is their commitment to privacy. Differing from other social geo-locating and rating apps ROODLE keeps personal information guarded, increasing trust from a user perspective. The free app is available for download on the Apple App Store right now will be on Google Play in ~10 days.
Roodle’s CEO Jon Wheeler comments, “I found myself asking my friends the same questions every Friday night; ‘Where are you guys?…What’s the scene like?…Is it crowded?’
It’s not that complicated, people just want to know a few basic things before they go out. So we came up with Roodle – to give users an instantaneous, real-time glimpse into the scene at their favorite nightspots. Sometimes you want to have a look inside before you pay the cover charge. Roodle gives you that…even before you get in the cab.”
Roodle is about simplicity. Users rate their current locale on three factors: male-female ratio, population (how crowded), and overall quality. A friends-list displays each friend’s most recent location, timestamp, and their subsequent rating.
Roodle users can decide on nightspots based on either their friend’s rating or a compilation rating based on the active Roodle community at that time. Geo-location functionality makes it easy for users to see the ratings of surrounding nightspots.
First and foremost, Roodle is about privacy. Not a single byte of data is shared without users having full control over it.
Secondly, many applications on the market have one-time check-in features, or status updates, that do not provide any value other than conveying an individual’s location at a particular instant in time. Roodle allows users to continually rate their current location; just as the crowd in a bar can change in an instant, so too can our opinions.
Finally, Roodle is focused solely on enhancing the nightlife experience. The team behind Roodle is committed to keeping the application fun, simple, and informative, with the long-term goal of Roodle becoming the standard tool for anyone with a social life.
We [the Roodle team] know it’s a great product because we are all Roodle users! In testing the app we really connected to how fun and easy to use it is. The team couldn’t wait for launch so we can switch from being developers into actual users. And with that, we are excited to receive and incorporate feedback from our early adopters. We are already working on some additional features to include in future updates, such as an alert button to poke your friends and say ‘I’m on my way’, or a threshold feature to alert you when your favorite spot has reached a certain rating. We also have plans to build in gamification functionality, awarding points to the “alpha friends” out there: those whose ratings seem to carry the most influence over others. It’s all very exciting and there is so much still to come – and as we like to say inside our offices, ‘We know where we’re going…Do you?’
You can download the Roodle app here.
