Tupalo, a new webservice by Vienna based 9tomorrows, is a service that lets users review everything in their neighborhood. From restaurants to record stores or independent shopping opportunities.
Right now their service covers eleven international cities, including Berlin, San Francisco, Toronto and of course Vienna.
The interface is quite intuitive, linking every location to a Google map, which is not only visually pleasing but also quite handy.
In the tradition of every web 2.0 service, they provide all the functionality of a social network as well, including friend requests and a messaging system (what would our lives be like without friend requests?).
Reviews can of course be tagged and the respective city’s homepage displays latest entries and latest active users.
It’s a service I for myself could see using more in the future, but I think they should consider creating a German version for the German speaking cities. Not because I don’t like their English, but because it’s probably a deal-breaker for the not-so-web2.0-crowd when they have to write reviews about their own home-towns in a foreign language.
All in all the app is a whole lot of fun really, as it not only invites you to review, but also to search and explore, and maybe find that one favourite cafe you didn’t think existed.
Screenshots (click for full-size, because yes, they look like crap when they’re that small):
The city default page
The review creation interface
Finally, the profile page, essential to any respectable social network. Fortunately, not all profile pages have to look like MySpace.