Portland-based Goboz, which has been available to a closed group of beta testers, has officially gone live, today, as promised.
Goboz features Citysearch-like functionality for reviewing and rating business. And the company has been working to position itself in this light. I mean, it’s Portland. We like to chat about our restaurants and bars. And, continuing down that path will likely be Goboz’ best means of supporting the site with local advertising revenue.
And, it’s true: Citysearch is horrible. It’s an easy target. No argument there.
At first blush, the easy Goboz brush-off could be “Another Digg clone?” or “Is this another Pligg site?” Do we really need another way to rank restaurants and bars in town?
Maybe not. But Goboz has something we do need. I’m thinking there’s some real potential here. That, if Goboz plays their cards right, they could fill a very interesting niche for the Portland Web community.
I think the true utility of Goboz is its ranking engine. Not for businesses, necessarily, but for Portland-based news and blog entries. And currently, that sort of activity is vastly under-served in our beloved Rose City.
I mean, as far as locally focused news-ranking services go, there’s The Oregonian reddit. And then there’s…. Well, that’s about it, actually.
So, while Goboz seems to want to lump themselves in with the Citysearch crowd, I’m going to advise you head over to the Goboz site with “Portland’s Digg” in mind. There could be some real value to the blogging community in that type of service.
In fact, I’ve added this post to Goboz, and we’ll see if you agree.
