Following its soft-launch back in October, MavenSay, a community for high quality recommendations revolving around music, food, drinks and shopping, is debuting a redesigned feed and an updated discover section ahead of SXSW.
You may have already guessed that MavenSay’s purpose isn’t to highlight everything in existence; a maven is a tastemaker — an expert. MavenSay focuses on the kind of user that always wants to know what’s good. The startup says it’s for the “kind of people who travel across town because the burger there is better than the one across the street.”
The iPhone-only app has gained ground lately in NYC, but the company is hoping to establish itself as a destination for lifestyle curation, and not solely a location-based guide.
With MavenSay’s redesigned feed (shown above), the app is getting more social features, including likes, comments and the ability to bookmark from the feed. For the discover section, MavenSay tells us that it will now become increasingly personalized to individual users over time.
To keep quality up, MavenSay claims that it’s growing in the right circles, as Tumblr did with fashion and Facebook with colleges. Stamped operated in a similar space, but according to MavenSay, the company failed because “they didn’t build a brand, and went mainstream out the gate, which diluted the community.”
Perhaps most importantly, MavenSay highlights content itself; a vetting process which might not scale down the road, but could keep the service on track during its early stages.
Check out MavenSay via the link below and let us know what you think in the comments!
➤ MavenSay for iPhone
Note: The app also features a bear logo, which we found quite charming.
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