Researchers have indicated that information exchange is an important factor for consumers’ decision making process (Sreenivasan et al., 2012). A Mashable study indicated that 57% of diners do not go out to eat without first consulting recommender system sites such as Yelp, FourSquare and Foodspotting (O’Rourke, 2011). However, despite the abundance of reviews, the ease of access and the general perceived trustworthiness of the sources, one inherent problem with existing food-related social media sites is that the reviews are not current. Post life is long and the distance between access point and the source, in terms of location and time, are still relatively far (Harbison, 2011). Reviews can range from days-old to several years-old.
Due to the nature of the restaurant service being intrinsically intangible and often “difficult to standardise”, it would be beneficial for both parties if first, the customers are able to instantaneously find reviews and engage in a final matching process and second, if restaurants can access these reviews through the same database and have the opportunity to react immediately to any problems and feedback which are addressed by customers or potential customers.
Evidently, there is a need for instant, real-time information. In response to this customer need, a new mobile-optimised micro-blogging platform, Currant, is proposed. At the moment, it is postulated that it will utilise technologies such as LBS, GPS, social networks, Web 2.0 and recommender systems.
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