How SynchroLife Takes a Unique Position in the Competitive Restaurant Search and Discovery Market

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SynchroLife

7 min readSep 21, 2017

One understandable comment the SynchroLife project has received is that restaurant search and review services already exist in many countries and that the market is already crowded. However, we at SynchroLife we believe that there is still a huge opportunity in this market.

It’s true that major restaurant discovery platforms exist in Japan, China, India, the United States, and many other countries. Many countries have multiple competing services as well.

Japan, which we have been using as a test market, also has a wide variety of food and restaurant related search, review, coupon, and payment services. However despite the existence of major platforms and many minor services, users studies in Japan have shown that the problem of finding good restaurants quickly and easily still remains unsolved and restaurants are still struggling to attract customers and get the word out about their restaurant. Even in mature markets there are still major issues in this industry that have yet to be resolved.

日本語のブログはこちら (Click to read this article in Japanese)
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SynchroLife plans to compete on a global level by:

1. Building a token-based economy using the Ethereum blockchain

2. Creating a decentralized platform that manages content and reviews to keep them trustworthy

3. Organizing the huge amount of restaurant information avaliable into an organized artificial intelligence based recommendation service

4. Becoming a platform for countries that currently do not have a highly developed or major restaurant discovery platform

Here at SynchroLife we are aiming to build a truly global restaurant recommendation platform that can compete in both mature and growing markets. 🍴

SynchroLife will be resolving many long held issues in restaurant discovery in mature markets and offer a highly reliable service to countries that do not yet have a major restaurant platform, so that it can prove useful to diners and restaurants throughout the world in any market!

Still not convinced? Keep reading for a further breakdown of SynchroLife’s unique approach to competing in the restaurant discovery industry.

1. Building a token-based economy using the Ethereum blockchain

SynchroLife will be issuing an original ERC20 token (the “SynchroCoin”, abbreviated SYC) based on Ethereum. The SynchroCoin will be used to create a token-based economy within SynchroLife where users are rewarded for providing high quality reviews, photos, edits to restaurant information, translation of restaurant information, the review of that information, and more.

User actions that provide value to the SynchroLife platform and other users are incentivized through the SynchroCoin. This keeps users coming back to the platform and rewards them for putting the time and effort into good quality content. We will build a decentralized restaurant recommendation platform of the likes that has never been done before, working alongside users to create high quality, transparent, and trustworthy restaurant information and review content.

Users can then use SynchroCoin to buy coupons, gift cards, or even pay for meals at participating restaurants, giving each token value. Restaurants can also use SynchroCoin to purchase marketing or customer relationship management tools.

2. Creating a decentralized platform that manages content and reviews to keep them trustworthy

For countries that already have well developed restaurant discovery platforms (such as Japan where we have been beta testing), finding restaurant information and recommendations is not a problem. The problem is the trustworthiness and reliability of the information and reviews you find.

Many restaurant search and review services average restaurant ratings based on a proprietary algorithm or hidden formula, while others only display vague emoticon ratings or reviews from the “best” users. These systems result in even more indecision for people looking for restaurants and frustration from restaurant owners confused by their rank or average. There has been growing distrust and controversy in the accuracy and fairness of all the reviews and secret algorithms in existing restaurant discovery services. Consumers in these countries want accurate information, trustworthy reviews and recommendations, and recommendations that they will actually enjoy.

SynchroLife resolves this issue with token rewards: by encouraging and rewarding users who add high quality content and who review and approve content. SynchroLife will work alongside our users to build a truly trustworthy and global platform.

A portion of SynchroLife’s users will become a group of content reviewers who review and approve (or disapprove) restaurant information changes and any suspicious content. Whether or not restaurant information changes or reported suspicious content is approved or rejected, and what reviewers reviewed it, will be stored on the blockchain for anyone to check. If any users want to look into the details of who posted what reviews when and who approved those reviews they can find the whole history and alert the SynchroLife Team or other reviewers to any suspicious “fake review” behavior.

Through decentralization the restaurant business information and reviews will be constantly monitored and updated in real time by both users and restaurants, and will be able to grow with changes in the market while keeping out misinformation and spam. We are striving to build a community and restaurant database that will become a truly trustworthy platform.

For more information on how SynchroLife will handle fake reviews, please see our blog post on the subject here: https://medium.com/@synchrocoin/how-synchrolife-will-handle-fake-reviews-3f910ecf5c0d

3. Organizing the huge amount of restaurant information avaliable into an organized artificial intelligence based recommendation service

As the restaurant business information and reviews avaliable become more accurate and increase, consumers are faced with decision fatigue as they work to sort through hundreds of search results and reviews. This is an issue today not only in the restaurant discovery industry but in news media, e-commerce, videos and many online based industries where consumers have to deal with information overload.

SynchroLife analyzes the restaurant ratings, likes, pins, follows, followers and other actions of each user within the app to match and compare each individual’s restaurant and food preferences with other users to build an image of that individual’s preferences. SynchroLife plans to continue development of artificial intelligence algorithms to analyze the preferences and tastes of each individual user to provide them with personalized search results, daily recommendations and other recommendations for restaurants that are all chosen just for them.

Personalized recommendations have already been proven to be an extremely effective in other digital services. Many people are already familiar with recommendations displayed in Netflix and Amazon, and these features have significantly helped to keep users engaged in both services. Netflix has revealed that up to 75% of Netflix viewers’ movies are recommended and Amazon has stated that 35% of what consumers purchase on Amazon come from recommended items.

We believe that once a market has enough restaurant information, the next stage is for fast, easy, and trustworthy recommendations from that information. SynchroLife is building a global platform for that next stage of restaurant search, replacing averaged rating or ad based rankings and results with artificial intelligence and personalized content for every individual user.

4. Becoming a platform for countries that currently do not have a highly developed or major restaurant discovery platform

While many first world countries and countries with a high mobile penetration rate already have well developed restaurant discovery platforms and app services, there are still many countries with limited or underdeveloped platforms and restaurant information.

As the economy and mobile penetration rates of these countries rise, there will be a steady increase of consumers dining out and looking for restaurant information online (especially via mobile device). We believe these countries have great market potential, and with a growing economy SynchroLife’s cryptocurrency token rewards for reviews and restaurant information will have high value to users in these countries.

SynchroLife’s decentralized platform will allow these users to build up the restaurant information and reviews in their country and earn cryptocurrency almost as a “part time job” for their time and content. They can build SynchroLife into a highly accurate and usable platform for their country while getting rewarded with SynchroCoin tokens!

The appeal of cryptocurrency reward services to users can be seen with ICO/crowdsale “bounty hunters”, the Steemit blog community, and other similar cryptocurrency reward services currently avaliable. Being rewarded for content is a trend that encourages and supports higher quality content, as can be seen with the ad monetization many bloggers, Youtubers, and other online content creators are adapting.

We believe with decentralization and SynchroCoin token rewards SynchroLife will be able to work alongside the communities in markets where the restaurant discovery industry or economy are just starting to grow to build a useful and beneficial platform for everyone.

We hope this blog post has helped answer some of your questions about how SynchroLife will compete against other restaurant search and discovery services: how SynchroLife solves some preexisting and what advantages SynchroLife has.

Stay up to date with the latest SynchroLife news and chat with our team by joining our Telegram group! 💬 https://t.me/synchrocoin

Learn more! Important Links and Information Regarding SynchroLife

SynchroLife Official Website: https://synchrolife.org/
White Paper: https://synchrolife.org/whitepaper.html

SynchroLife Beta App (Without Blockchain Technology and Token Rewards)
100,000+ downloads and a growing global community! Try it yourself!
iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id557532449
Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.synchrolife

Official Website: https://synchrolife.org/
White Paper: https://synchrolife.org/whitepaper.html
Official Blog: https://medium.com/@synchrocoin
Beta iOS App: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id557532449
Beta Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.synchrolife
Twitter: https://twitter.com/synchrocoin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/synchrocoin
Telegram: https://t.me/synchrocoin