BlackBook Guides Facebook App

Plastic Past is pleased to announce the launch of the BlackBook Guides on Facebook.  Use the BlackBook Guides to read about the best and newest restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels and shops in cities around the world.

BlackBook approached Plastic Past in 2008 to design and develop a Facebook Application that leveraged their extensive data mine of restaurants, bars, and other venues.  Working with the BlackBook team to develop a Facebook strategy, Plastic Past designed and developed the BlackBook Guides application.

The BlackBook Guides Facebook Application integrates premium, curated listings from BBook.com into a social networking site with a first-of-its-kind functionality enabling users to share with their friends where they are going. Once Facebook users add the application onto their personal profile, they can access BlackBook’s insider database and reviews of restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels and boutiques. Users can click “I am going here,” which, in turn, posts an automated update on their profile page and onto their newsfeeds announcing their plans and enables them to directly invite their friends to join.

Click to go to the BlackBook Guides application on Facebook.

BlackBook Guides – User Experience

For the BlackBook Guides Facebook App, Plastic Past designed the user experience to be as informative and functional as possible, while giving users every excuse to share and take social action on any piece of content.  This meant working closely with BlackBook to design a set of APIs that they would use as the backend technology to support usage of their data on Facebook as well as on future social platforms, including as mobile devices.

Users could comment and browse venues sorted in a variety of ways, as well as see their friends’ favorite venues, where their friends were planning to go, and share content wither other users explicitly through Facebook invitations, notifications, or email.

Newest venues

Friends of Friends

Venue details