Competitor+Urbanspoon

//I stumbled upon this today, an (in)direct competition http://www.utmdeals.com/subscribe.php It is UTM specific, but still competition.Maja// Urbanspoon is one of the most popular restaurant recommendation which includes canadian, austrilian, UK and american restaurants. It's pretty powerful as noted:

" Every month more than 12 million consumers decide where to eat on Urbanspoon.com."

Don't know what happened to my computer, my screenshots can be posted here. So I just post the links. I pick the same restaurant "Love at First Bite" on both sites. [] []

Here are some strengths of Urbanspoon.
 * This website covers almost all the main cities in these area. It's a great guide for visitors. In other words, it's more like a restaurant yellow page.
 * user created content. It allows people to vote for the restaurant, add link or photo and comment to the target.
 * If people are not interested in it, alternatives are provided in the side bar to keep users to the website.
 * They are basically free since the info is not verified. If you claim your restaurant, then you can edit your page, have a 30 days free ad and free reservation until 2012.
 * So, reservation service is another strength. " Every day top restaurants are choosing Urbanspoon's [|Rez and Rezbook] to take online reservations and manage their tables. Your openings will be displayed to millions of users on Urbanspoon.com and you will never pay for reservations from your own website. Claim your restaurant now and you'll get free reservations from our network until 2012. "

Also weaknesses:
 * No detailed photo menu. Users can see the food visually. If you don't know the restaurant, you can't tell the difference just from name.
 * No open time
 * No specific target market
 * No price search

Therefore, some opportunities I can think about is:
 * User create content.To encourage people to vote for restaurant, we can hand out flyers in the restaurant about the photo contest. Like do you like this restaurant then take a photo and post it on phenu to win an iPad right now.
 * Focus on the target market and expand gradually
 * Find out those unverified restaurants and get them to phenu.
 * Urbanspoon could also be a good tool to find out high quality restaurant around universities by checking out the votes.