Now, an iOS app for discovering trending restaurants, bars and events nearby, has just received an update, featuring a redesign and support for videos through Twitter’s Vine service. According to its creators, Now helps you “figure out where the action is” by building out a social heap map of popular activities around you.
With new support for Vine, Now is bound to become a more reliable utility — previously Now only relied on Instagram to surface trending places and events around you.
Vine is a particularly interesting addition, because as the service grows, it’s easy to see how helpful it could be when you’re deciding how to spend your night out — videos say so much about a venue’s atmosphere.
In addition to the above updates, Now has also added the ability to save places you’re interested in. This ties back to its new interface, which is both attractive and easy to use, aside from a few quirks. The settings page, for example, is hidden behind the filtering options. You can view it with an upward swipe; strangely, another upward swipe will bring you back to the map view.
Now takes a different approach from its competitors, including Sosh, which recently launched in NY. In our view, it makes quite a bit of sense to consider social data when recommending places to go nearby. That in mind, social data does not necessarily reflect expert opinion, like when you’re searching for the best cocktails in the Lower East Side, or the most impressive graffiti spots in Brooklyn.
➤ Now for iOS (free)
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