(Special thanks to the folks at KillerStartups.com for providing the links/reviews to these services)
I'm a big fan of discovery services on the Web. Anything that lets me find out about more music, wine, and parties is meaningful to me.
Cal Naughton, Jr.: Ricky, if you turn on the stereo, how do you control the volume on the television?
Ricky Bobby: If you have the stereo on, why would you turn up the volume on the TV?
Cal Naughton, Jr.: Cause I like to party.
(that was totally irrelevant, it just cracks me up)
Recommendation engines are nothing new. Amazon has been doing them since the dawn of the Web and dozens of companies have tried to pursue the golden chalice of music recommendations and just about every other product.
So let's not talk about what's new, let's talk about what's useful.
Wine (Cork'd.com) - Cork'd is a quasi-social network for wine recommendations. I love drinking wine but I don't know jack about it. My friends, however, know a ton about wine and are continually recommending wines to me. Unfortunately they are recommending them while they are pouring them, which means by the time I'm done "tasting," I can't remember a damn thing.
Cork'd helps solve that problem. If I could have my friends upload reviews and store them on the Web, I could simply pick up the bottles I know they enjoy or request them at my next dinner party. Simple and useful. Love it.
Music (MusicMesh.net) - Before you send me an exhaustive list of 100 other sites that recommend music, let me stop you there. I personally love the way iTunes recommends tracks from your playlist. That's sweet. But I love MusicMesh simply because I never left the homepage.
Their little flash service that recommends 5 discs visually (although I never think about music in disc format anymore) is simple and fun. I love any site that engages me in the first 3 seconds with something meaningful. I found a great version of Chris Cornell's music in symphonic mode. Time to payoff - 60 seconds. Done!
Parties (Going.com) - OK, so Going.com has decided my hometown of Columbus, Ohio is not exactly LA or NYC (nor is any other city.) Regardless, I'll give them points on the premise. As a former nightclub owner and event promoter myself, I know that having a tight social network of people to make a party happen in short order is a really big deal.
I would argue that MySpace already does this in spades, and that a bunch of other sites like upcoming, socializr, and even eVite (which I love) to some degree do this. Yet what I love about Going.com is that it's specifically focused toward getting the party started. The only thing I don't like about Going.com is their insistence on getting your registered too quickly. It's pushy.