Aroundme.com is a new website that is attempting to help validate the web’s recommendations for things like restaurants, doctors, mechanics and handymen by allowing you to connect with your friends on Facebook. If you can see the restaurants or doctors your friends are going to, you’re more likely to patronize those and that’s what this site is all about. The folks running aroundme.com have asked me to review the website from head to toe, they’re paying for this pleasure of course.

Nice Setup

Aroundme.com has a very good looking setup and have all the information you’ll ever need to find good recommendations for your area. Type in what you’re looking for and the city you need it in and the site will provide you with an ordered list of the best locations available. It will show each location on a map and you can click down a level and get the address and phone number. Also in each listing are the user reviews and a quick to read ratings section.

Another nice feature of the site is the ability to log-in with Facebook connect. I freaking hate having a 100 log-ins, so if I can log in with Facebook info, I’m all for it. Once you’re logged in you can share any of the locations with your friends on Facebook.

I also really like the fact that this isn’t just restaurant focused. There are a lot of similar websites out there that are only restaurant focused and quite frankly, how many do you need? People need to earn my trust and I often have a hard time going to a new mechanic or having someone I don’t know fix my stove, so Aroundme.com’s expansion into those service industries is welcomed by me. I’d love to see what mechanics my friends use, that would be so helpful to see who they trust.

Too New To Tell

While it appears that Aroundme.com has a lot of promise, it’s a little difficult to tell how useful it will really be considering it’s so sparsely populated. In the Cleveland area there are only a handful of reviews, so things like rankings provide little value. That being said, it has a lot of nice features that could attract a big user base, so I’d expect this to be a much more useful site as time goes on. If you’re anything like me, I’d recommend heading over there and signing up so you can share your opinions.

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