Whether you’re looking for a restaurant or a new sight to see, Gogobot will now make use of context clues and millions of data points to anticipate your entertainment desires. “Most of the apps on your phone are old-fashioned,” said vice president of product, Zaid Al-Husseini, of the Gogobot update. “They haven’t gone past search. They require hunting and pecking. They’re generic search-based products that help you find things, but you need to know what you’re looking for in order for them to be “helpful,” and even after searching, they show generic results targeting the lowest common denominator. All that tapping around is an unnecessary time suck for you.”
So now, Gogobot is putting efficiency first. By keeping tabs on what you’re most likely to search for at a certain time of day, whether you’re a native of your location or just visiting for a few days, and how far you tend to be willing to go for various activities, the app serves up suggestions that it hopes will cater even better to your tastes. That means that you’ll be given a totally different roster of things to do if you’re looking on a clear Friday evening as opposed to a rainy Sunday afternoon.
As before, the app asks about your interests — adventure, arts, business, families, food, history, and so on — which Gogobot refers to as “tribes.” But now the app looks at things like what people search for most at a specific time of day, whether a user is a visitor or a local, and how far they generally travel to engage in an activity. It also factors in things like what day it is, the time of day, and what the weather is like.
“Gogobot’s new app is a smarter way to discover places to go and things to do,” said Travis Katz, founder and CEO of Gogobot. “We want you to spend your time having amazing experiences, not searching for them on your tiny bright screen. The new Gogobot app will actually be able to predict what you are looking for, so you don’t have to search at all, leveraging data from millions of queries to help identify the right things to do at the exactly the right time.”
