Unthirsty linked on Boing Boing
posted Thu Jul 19 14:10:00 -0700 2007 by Matt King
But the post wasn’t really about us. They listed our arch-nemesis MappyHour as being the best happy hour site, then mentioned us as competitors. Even though Unthirsty was up before MappyHour, and MappyHour also scraped our information, including our notes, to use on their site (they did however remove the notes when we wrote and complained).
From the article:
“MappyHour lets you scope out and plan your pub crawl before you leave the house or office. It includes happy hours (if available), drink specials, and even food to pour your beer on top of. It has many American cities and a couple of international ones (Sydney, Melbourne).”
The pub crawl idea is sweet. But, Unthirsty beats out MappyHour on locations because you can add happy hours anywhere Google Maps works, not just “many American cities and a couple of international ones.”
“The biggest cities are the best developed, but users can add pubs, as well as ratings and reviews for any location. If there are no reviews for a bar, the site links to Yelp reviews. It also looks like the bars themselves can buy space on the site to list their drink special and hours.”
If you’re going to call your site “MappyHour”, then all the listings on the site should actually have Happy Hour listings. A lot of the bars I click on in MappyHour say “Oh no, we don’t have the happy details for this location. They probably have a happy hour though, y’know? They’ve gotta.” Also, Unthirsty likes to be objective and not allow bars to pay for prominent placement.
“Limitations: The review system’s a little wonky. I lost a review I wrote by trying to pinpoint the bars location better. Also, it only shows the nearest 50 bars to your location. If an excellent bar is the 51st closest, it won’t show up.”
Unthirsty doesn’t have any of these problems! We also have an awesome search function, filtering based on features like Wifi and Non-smoking, and even only showing happy hours that are going on at the moment you’re looking at the site.
C’mon BoingBoing, where’s the love? I guess we did get mentioned and linked to in the article, and our link even comes before any other link in the article, so there is a silver lining. Let’s hope people will take a look at their choices and make the better one *cough*unthirsty*cough*.
All of this merits a couple questions: Why is MappyHour better? and what is MappyHour doing that Unthirsty isn’t?
by Anonymous on Thu Jul 19 16:50:10 -0700 2007
Hi!I just found you through BoingBoing! I checked out all the linked sites, and yes, this IS better!
by Jason Glaspey on Thu Jul 19 18:06:08 -0700 2007
As one of Unthirsty's founding fathers, I thought I would say what everyone is thinking: This post is a bit on the defensive. We're talking about competitors, and saying we're better. Yup. That's the deal.
However, we do want to know what it is about MappyHour that people like so much. And I do want people to know that they got their start scraping our content. I love Unthirsty like a child, and have been proud to work on it, and it's like someone insulting your baby, or pissing in your cheerios, and so we get a little defensive.
Now, nobody can whine about us being defensive and bratty, because we admit it. However, I think you'll like us anyway, because we save you the cashes in your search for the nachos.
by Justin Kistner on Fri Jul 20 15:29:40 -0700 2007
Cashes for me nachos=Unthirsty is the coolest