After two and a half months in private beta, StreetAdvisor has become available to the general public. And yet I have to say that StreetAdvisor is “available to” – as opposed to “ready for” – the public, because the site is the cyber equivalent of a ghost town.
StreetAdvisor is intended to be a place for people to review and research residential streets throughout America, the UK, Canada, and Australia.
The main page looks nice, and lists five “Top Streets” and five more “Recent Street Reviews.” Click on any (or all) of these streets, however, and you’ll see that they’ve received just one review apiece.
On the bright side, the reviews contain a number of different categories (users can rate anything from cell phone reception to pest populations), but even this advantage could become a drawback.
After all, how many people will take the time to provide all that information? It could be quite a while before StreetAdvisor collects enough reviews to be of use.
Following an article at Mashable.com, John Kenney pointed out another problem: “Residents would seem to have a strong incentive towards favorable comments on their neighborhood in order to drive up the value of their property,” he noted.
StreetAdvisor is a nice concept, with imagery provided by Google Maps and a clean, logical design; it just remains to be seen if the site can gain any followers. The site’s creators seem optimistic, concluding the “About Us” section with the declaration, “Everyone’s got something to say… and share!” But . . . do they?
