[plax512]

It would be cool if there was a service that let customers "text their testimonials" straight from their seat. So, customers would be able to write a testimonial right from their phone and send it as a text. These texts would go to a central backend, where the owner can approve/disprove each one as they come in. The ones that are approved get published to the site so customers can view the reviews in the tab. If I was a restaurant owner, I would pay a decent fee to for this service, especially because I get to approve of every review and I'll probably get a lot of them. It's different than yelp because all the testimonials go on the restaurant's website, as opposed to Yelp's own... Customers would like it because it's easy to write a review, and maybe restaurants can offer deals for customers who do write them or whatever. Textmonoials is where it's at...

[whichdan]

That's basically how EasyEndorse works, if you go to their website and submit the review using Safari. Texting testimonials is great in theory, but it would require either:

a) A custom shortcode, and a way to associate a message with a given restaurant.

or

b) An email address they could use in lieu of a number (since texts are essentially emails), but typing [e-mail] would be more verbose than just going to their site.

Did you have something else in mind?

[plax512]

Well, the idea is that for a fee, you will provide each restaurant with a custom phone number, maybe from twilio, but email would work I guess, but that doesn't seem as cool to me. Textamonials has an appeal, but I guess email can as well. You would probably have to have a feature where owners can either turn on or off, that when turned on, will send a follow up email back to the customer after they write a review saying "thanks for the testimonial, here's 10% off your meal!"

EDIT: To better explain it, because that was from my phone, I think it can work if you charge restaurant owners lets say $30/month in exchange for a custom backend and phone number, that allows customers to send their testimonials, and the backend is where the owner can approve of which ones get published to his site. THe backend would also be where the owner can turn on certain features, like the "rewards" feature... So, for a testimonial, a customer may get no reward, or 10% off his meal. That would be up to the owner. Of course, a phone number is only allowed one review, so you would have to keep track of each number. In the end, I think it's a very plausible idea though.