IC Places iPhone App Gives a New Face to Traditional Online Restaurant Reviews

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 21, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- IC Places Inc. (OTCQB: ICPA) (Pink Sheets: ICPA), owners of www.icPlaces.com, announced today, after nearly 11 months of development, The Instant Restaurant Review App can finally be downloaded from the iTunes store. 

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-instant-restaurant-review/id489857259?mt=8

"This App could quietly become a game changer for IC Places and the review industry as a whole," said Steven Samblis, President of IC Places, Inc. "While building www.icplaces.com we saw the growth of online reviews. I watched as a billion dollar industry spring up, built mainly around online reviews with web sites like Amazon.com, Citysearch, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Urban Spoon and many others.  As these sites became influential, we saw the birth of another industry.  A group of people who, for a fee, will post positive or negative reviews about a company online.

"According to a recent New York Times article, Mechanical Turk, a Web site owned by Amazon.com is a place where a business can pay Turk workers to write fake five-star reviews and post them to Yelp and other review based websites. Most Turk workers are based in India and often only earned $2 to $3 an hour.  In an attempt to maintain the integrity of reviews, some websites have invested millions of dollars creating complex algorithms to find the fake reviews and remove them."

The Fake Review Killer

Humankind has evolved over tens of thousands of years by talking to each other face to face. Now, we communicate in a myriad of virtual ways.

IC Places founder Steven Samblis thought, "Why not go back to our roots?" It was there Samblis found the solution and The Instant Restaurant Review was born. 

Sometimes the best solutions are the most simple and obvious.

The Instant Restaurant Review App does two very important things. It puts a face on every review and the App will only record a review within 100 feet of the restaurant you are reviewing. Adding a human face to a review and forcing proximity to the restaurant will help to eliminate fake reviews.

How The Instant Restaurant Review App Works.

When you finish your dining experience, fire up The Instant Restaurant Review and find the restaurant you have just left.  The experience will be fresh in your mind and on your palette. 

Next, rate the restaurant  based on 1 to 5 stars in the areas of Food Quality, Ambience, and Service.

Lastly, the most powerful step, record your video review. Hold up your iPhone or have a friend hold it and give your instant thoughts on the experience right into the camera.

Hit send and the review is sent to IC Places staff members who will take a quick look to make sure the review meets submission rules.  Once approved, the review is sent to that restaurant's page in the www.icplaces.com city in which it is located.

The review will show up in the right column of the page with other reviews. Rankings will be tabulated and added to the average score.

People that use the App will have their own page at www.icplaces.com with all the establishments they have reviewed. Soon there will be an option for reviews to automatically post to facebook.

Adding a human face to a review and forcing proximity to restaurants will help ferret out potentially fake reviews and add a higher level of credibility to each review.

Building the IC Places Footprint Automatically

At IC Places, every restaurant shown in the websites have been touched by a human hand.  It's not a group of websites fed by some giant store bought database.

IC Places currently covers 350 major US cities. Soon, The Instant Restaurant Review App will help to organically, automatically build IC Places footprint of Cities. 

This will happen as new reviews arrives from cities not currently featured in the of IC Places Cities. The sites servers will build new City Sites for these cities.  As time goes on, metro areas will meld in smaller surrounding cities.  This process will create a matrix of smart City Sites that grow as people use them.

People can see the App and download it from iTunes.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-instant-restaurant-review/id489857259?mt=8

About IC Places:

IC Places owns and operates 350 city news and entertainment websites. Each IC Places City website offers a virtual keyhole view of life in each community. Every unique aspect of a city's social, business, and cultural life is available right at each city's IC Places homepage. IC Places provides the entire community a place to talk, do business and get connected. Businesses are given amazing tools to tell their stories in the best way possible and visitors get unfettered access to businesses, events and people in each city. To see one of the IC Places City sites in action, please visit http://www.ICplaces.com.com/orlando.

IC Places Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of management and are subject to a number of uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect the company's current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. A more extensive listing of risks and factors that may affect the company's business prospects and cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the reports and other documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Contact Info
Steven Samblis
407-442-0309 ext. 2
[email protected]

SOURCE IC Places Inc.