05 October 2009 by Jim
Smarta is loving the new version of UK local reviews site TrustedPlaces, which relaunched today with brand new features and a sparkly new design.
Founded by lengthily monikered entrepreneurs Sokratis Papafloratos (currently starring on Smarta’s home page) and Walid Al Saqqaf in 2004, the site saw its traffic increase to 920,000 users a month during 2008.
We’re particularly impressed by the feature which allows users to earn £50 by referring local businesses to the site, and gives businesses which sign up for a premium account £40 worth of free advertising around the site.
TrustedPlaces’ review system has also had an interesting overhaul and now allows users to post shorter reviews. As a TP user who has been daunted by not having the time/inclination to provide lengthy reviews of places we’ve been, Smarta is pleased to see the new system, which seems to work on the basis that less is more.
We’re also delighted to see the pair obviously have no qualms admitting where they took inspiration: they’ve dubbed the feature ‘reviews “a la Twitter”’.