Archive for November, 2009

Plotstar: new local discovery & planning site

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

plotstar

Plotstar launched yesterday and it is an interesting fusion of social activity planning + discovery in the hyerlocal area. So, if you are going on a shopping trip with a couple of friends to Oxford street, Plotstar allows you to create a list of things you’d like to do including shops to visit, restaurants to eat and places to see. Once you have created your itinerary you share it with your friends.

Polstar uses the BView promotions API to integrate local offers and deals which you can include in your plan.

We expect big things of the service as it adds new partners and functionality – watch this space.

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Posted in Partners | 2 Comments »

Bookingbug relaunches, working with BView

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Bookingbug, the web booking service, has just exited their Beta phase and I am happy to say that we will be working with them to get vouchers created on the Bookingbug platform indexed and included within the BView distribution network and APIs.

The beauty of the Bookingbug service is that their online bookings interface is full widgetised i.e. if you use Bookingbug to manage your bookings online you can put the booking widget on every website you use to promote your business from social sites to directories and more.

Look out for vouchers and offers appearing on BView with a “book now” link.

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Posted in Product Updates | Comments Off

Carter Ruck threatens BView with "Damages and Costs" about Interexec review

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Carter Ruck threatens BView about Interexec review
We are committed to supporting good businesses that value their customers and treat them fairly:  Vouchers from local businesses on BView are good for both businesses and customers– customers save money while supporting local businesses.  And good businesses get more customers.
As well as our voucher search engine (local businesses can add vouchers for free here), we give customers the chance to tell others about their experiences with businesses via reviews.  Most of these reviews are positive and give many businesses a lot of credibility with potential customers.  Companies like Atlantic Trampolines and SSKD Selffit Kitchens are clearly loved by their customers.
Others do not fare as well.  In all cases, we offer businesses the opportunity to report abusive reviews as well as the chance to respond publicly to any review.
Sometimes instead of a business responding to a negative review, we receive a letter from a solicitor asking us to remove the review. If the review breaks our terms & conditions then we remove it. If it doesn’t then we leave it in place. In the interest of transparency, we recently made the decision to publish such letters if they 1) pertain to a review that is compliant with our terms and conditions, and 2) the reviewer stands by what they wrote and supports our action.
The review in question was for Interexec and the legal firm is Carter Ruck. You can read the review here and make your own decision about whether the review is defamatory or not. The letter we received is shown below.

We are committed to supporting good businesses that value their customers and treat them fairly:  vouchers from local businesses on BView are good for both businesses and customers– customers save money while supporting local businesses.  And good businesses get more customers.

As well as our voucher search engine (local businesses can add vouchers for free here), we give customers the chance to tell others about their experiences with businesses via reviews.  Most of these reviews are positive and give many businesses a lot of credibility with potential customers.  Companies like Atlantic Trampolines and SSKD Selffit Kitchens are clearly loved by their customers.

Others do not fare as well.  In all cases, we offer businesses the opportunity to report abusive reviews as well as the chance to respond publicly to any review.

Sometimes instead of a business responding to a negative review, we receive a letter from their solicitor seeking damages and costs from us unless we make the review disappear from public view. If the review breaks our terms & conditions then we remove it. If it doesn’t then we leave it in place. In the interest of transparency, we recently made the decision to publish such letters if they 1) pertain to a review that is compliant with our terms and conditions, and 2) the reviewer stands by what they wrote and supports our action.

The review in question was for Interexec and the legal firm is Carter Ruck. You can read the review here and make your own decision about whether the review is defamatory or not. The letter we received from their solicitors is shown below.

Carter Ruck

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Posted in General | 1 Comment »

BView wins LTF award

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Last night we spent an enjoyable few hours at the London Technology Fund 2009 award ceremony where we picked up the category award for Information, Communications & Technology (or ICT).

The LTF runs this competition on an annual basis with the aim being to help London-based tech startups by providing a competitive environment, introductions to some key potential partners and a helping hand in key aspects of building and scaling a business.

We were delighted to win our category where we were up against some fantastic competition (the other finalists being Media Equals, a media trading platform, and Zanran, a statistical data search engine) and we feel only slightly disappointed to loose the grand prix to Trojantec who develop cancer stem therapeutics.

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Posted in Announcements | Comments Off