Nick Nunns on mobile devices at bars, beer fetishism, and bar camaraderie
I think one of the reasons Untappd is so unappealing to me is that it doesn’t open up any conversation. People are so used to their drinking buddies using their phones at the dinner table or bar that they just assume those people are checking twitter or email or whatever else we do when there’s a lull in the conversation. Were you to whip out a small notebook (or if you’re really fancy, a notebook from 33beers.com) the people you are drinking with might have more reason to ask what it is that you’re doing, and then you can get into the conversation of how you like to track what you’ve tried out in the beer world. BOOM! Conversation successfully started.
Nick and I spent some time last summer working on what we thought would soon become BeerThere, a nearly identical service to Untappd. It came pretty far along, but after we met up in September, we realized the concept didn’t work for us in practice. Like Nick said, Untappd’s done some great work, it’s just not something I want to be doing at the bar.
Very interesting perspective. I’ve long thought about a beer-tracking service, and the one thing that I’ve kept coming back to is that I don’t want it to be a social network.
This is my idea, which I hope someone steals and makes — a plain-Jane HTML5 database that’s only on my phone. I want it to be so simple that it only takes 30 seconds to fill out and is only on my phone, for when I don’t even have enough light to pull out a notebook.
(See also, John’s Beer Drinking Records)
