Qype - Live and tell

You might have noticed all sorts of little symbols popping up on your Qype page. What are they for? Well these are your very own personal compliments.

Sharing the love on Qype is very important and if you’ve done something wonderful, we think people should be able to tell you. They can compliment you on your reviews, your photos and even coax you into writing a bit more if you’ve been a bit quiet. You can even get flirty with a few Qypers you think are sexy. We secretly hope you’ll then hit it off at the Qype party and then there will be a Qype wedding,

All you need to do is either click on the compliment tab on a review, or the one on someone’s profile. Then tell them how lovely and brilliant you think they are.

Then sit back and wait for that cute Qyper to return the compliment. And by the way, we like your shoes.

You beady-eyed Qypers might have noticed that there’s a category section on your reviews now. This means that you can help other people find your places even easier. You know how it is. Sometimes you just really want a Pan-Asian restaurant in London Bridge and nothing else will do.

So do fill this bit out. You’ll get extra points soon once the catagories are checked by the Qype elves. After all, you don’t want to find that your posh frock bistro is actually a greasy spoon do you?

You can also tag more than one category. Which means that if you can’t decide if somewhere is a cafe or a bar or a pub you can tag them all. And we suggest you do. Then the Qype searching system will be even better and everyone will love your reviews and give you great feedback and we’ll be very impressed with you and think you’re brilliant.

Siany has been browsing Qype today while drinking tea and noticed that some of you don’t put many tags in your reviews. Do!!! Go and tag them! Tag them all like crazy tagging Qypers! Then more people are likely to stumble over your reviews and give you points! And points generally mean brilliance in the form of goodies in the post.

Siany tagged one of her reviews ‘loo smell’ and ‘pigeon poo’ and one rather strange person found the review through being nosy about these tags…

Let’s have a look at some other silly tags from you guys… click on them! see where they go!

Marmosets, idiots, inebriating, enchanting, etc!, candy colour bags, chavvy, diabolical!, dungeons, soft porn, the kiss-me-quick style promenade ,

See, look at all those new places you’ve discovered! So go get tagging! Silliness welcomed. Especially if it’s about marmosets and dungeons.

Where on earth did Barty come from? She’s appeared as if from nowhere and within a week has a whole load of Qype points to her name! She might be the fastest person to whoosh her way to Insider status. Hooray!

If you didn’t meet her at the party, Siany learnt many things about her. Including the fact that she made the mistake of thinking a ‘Martini and Lemonade’ was the same as a Martini cocktail. Siany would laugh but she thought the same thing until a few years back. Here’s some stuff she shared with Siany when her hangover had gone…

Tell us more about you.
My name is Jessica, I’m 17, and I work in London (in the same office as Qype UK, incidentally).
I’ve lived in London for most of my life, with a brief few years in Surrey to finish High School before I moved back to London and started working. I’ve been working for moveme.com for 2 years now, as Marketing Assistant/Copywriter.

My favourite things in life are: socialising, surfing the web and chilling out on the sofa with my boyfriend.

What do you enjoy most about Qyping?
I’m really into the whole social networking / meeting people online thing, and I love the fact that Qype has a perfect balance of an interesting, informative part and a large social networking base.
I also love reading other people’s opinions, and knowing that other people are reading and (most importantly) liking mine too. It’s very rewarding.

What makes you happy about the places you review?
I like feeling that I’m giving something back to the good places by spreading the word and hopefully driving other people there; getting positive feedback about my reviews makes me very happy. It’s also sweet vengeance on the bad places when you can leave them a stinking review.

What annoys you the most?
Qype-wise? I’m not sure I’ve found much that annoys me yet… bad writers I find annoying in general and I’m sure I will come across some of them soon. I really have no time to read bad spelling/ grammar/ writing in general - what’s the point in that?

Generally, I get ridiculously annoyed by commuters, people who walk slowly whom I can’t get past, and people who don’t speak properly. Innit.

What was the place you wanted to keep a secret?
Candy Cakes, in Covent Garden. On the one hand it’s a wonderful place and I want everyone to share my joy of biting into a bright pink, giant cupcake. On the other hand, it gets busy enough as it is and I hate queueing for good food… that’s like mental torture!

How can people write better reviews?
Make them at least five sentences long, so you can detail what you did or didn’t like about the service, the product, the décor, everything. If it’s too short then it’s not informative and information is what Qype is about! I would say ‘good grammar, good spelling’ for whatever language you write in, but I suspect I’ve covered those points already.

Anything else you wanna say?
It’s all I think about at the moment, so I have to say: I’m really looking forward to my 18th Birthday in July, and seeing my best mates Ana and Amber from Germany and Seattle - it’s going to be the best experience of the year and, of course, I promise to review any venues I attend on that brilliant day!

You can read her reviews here. Give her even more points!

How do you score your reviews? Are you a harsh reviewer? Or are you more forgiving? We realised yesterday that the way you guys see our scoring system changes from Qyper to Qyper. Obviously one star is pretty easy, so is five stars, but it’s the bit in the middle that seems to cause a bit of variation. So to kick off the debate, here’s how Siany reviews her places:

So there you go. Are you more harsh than us? Do you have a different way of scoring your reviews? Or does it just depend on whether you’re typing before your morning cuppa? Tell us in the comments.