Behind the Curtain: Pintley 3

 

A few weeks ago, we unveiled our new initiative to help you Discover a Better Night Out. Today, we’re ready to give you an exclusive look behind the curtain at how this philosophy will manifest itself in the next version of the Pintley iPhone and Android apps.

Location, Location, Location

When we started Pintley, we had one simple goal—to help you drink better beer. We believed that giving beer recommendations based on personal ratings was the best way to help people discover beer they’d love. And it’s really working! You’ve added over 1.3 Million ratings to Pintley, and we’ve served up tens of millions of recommendations.

With Pintley 3, we’re taking this experience to the next level. A few months ago we launched a new feature called BeerTrack that lets you keep track of what you’re drinking and where. We’re now integrating BeerTrack directly into the ratings system to make tracking even easier.

This is a first step in a larger push towards integrating location data into our recommendations engine. This data will allow us to better track where beer is available at any given time, so we can help you find exactly what you’re looking for. In fact, we’re even working on a strategic partnership to bring you the most up-to-date and comprehensive beer location information available. While I can’t tell the full story just yet, expect some exciting new features on the horizon.

Levels

Pintley loves its users. To show you just how much we love you, in Pintley 2 we added points and prizes to reward you for trying new beer. Pintley 3 is going to take points one step further with a new feature we call Levels.

New users will begin their Pintley lives as lowly Beer Novices. As you try and track new beers, you’ll earn points, which will promote you through the ranks. You’ll be able to follow your progress and compete with your friends on the new leader boards.

Much like with BeerTrack, adding levels is just a first step.  Over the next few months, we’ll be adding more opportunities to win prizes, play games, and discover the world of beer. More on that to come.

 

The Feed

One of Pintley’s best features is the news feed, which lets you both share your recent obsession with IPAs and talk about the great new harvest ale your friends just discovered. Since we launched this feature, it’s seen some very heavy use, so we thought it was time for an upgrade.

With Pintley V3, we’re making the feed even more robust. With new filters for Friends and “Me,” it’s easy to separate your own activity on Pintley from what your friends are doing. While we’re at it, we’ve also decided to show you what’s going on in the Pintley stratosphere, with a global option which allows you to see who’s trying what up to the second.

These are just three new features that are coming in Pintley 3. Keep hitting that check for updates button, because the timer is running down and you’ll want to get it while it’s still hot!

 

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  • Steve

    Can’t wait, sounds like a

  • Steve

    Sounds like a great way to not only discover new beers, but find them locally!!

  • Anonymous

    Will these changes be coming to the Android App as well? How about any UI changes to the Android app? It doesn’t look anything like the iOS app and is awkward to use.

    This is what the homescreen looks like on my phone: http://cl.ly/3B3t3K470H1x0I1g2o3d

    • Anonymous

      Yep, these changes will be coming to Android, too.

      One thing Jayson didn’t mention is that we’re making a concerted effort to use native controls wherever possible in this release, so everything should look and feel native on Android.

  • gues.

    4Square meets beer drinking. I like it. A lot.

  • http://profiles.google.com/jramskov Joergen Ramskov

    I registered some time ago, but stopped using it because you’re missing quite a few beers in your database. What do I do when I want to rate a beer and it’s not in your database?

    I just installed your android app and tried checking for one of the latest beers I have tasted (Mikkeller Monks Elixir Barrel Aged Red Wine Edition) and sure enough, that wasn’t in the database either.

    I really like the idea and concept otherwise, but that is a showstopper.

    • Anonymous

      You can actually request beers be added to the database right here:

      http://www.pintley.com/addbeer/

    • Anonymous

      AND you can earn points for submitting them. We have a small backlog on approving suggested beers, but it’s getting cleared up, so go ahead and add away!

      • http://profiles.google.com/jramskov Joergen Ramskov

        Yeah, but it doesn’t show up in my rated list which is confusing to me as a user. I guess it doesn’t until you’ve added it, but I think it should, perhaps with a “Beer not yet verified by Pintley” mark, but it should show up.

        I’m from Denmark, so I believe those points are of little use for me.

        • Anonymous

          Completely agree with you. This is on our list for a future version. Will be addressed ASAP.

    • Snotsucker

      I’ve been saying this from early on. You don’t have a good product until you have a great database.

  • http://www.facebook.com/jivetheuniversal Jive TheUniversal

    How about letting us click on our “Friends” and see an alphabetical list of all the beers they’ve rated, and their ratings. How is this not in there at all?

    • Anonymous

      That’s actually an included feature as well… Jayson just didn’t mention it. :)

  • Snotsucker

    In some ways, this is eerily beginning to look like Untappd.

  • Steve

    Everytime it says there are new updates available on the Android market, I feverishly open it to see if Pintley is in the list…even though it’s already set to auto-update! I’m really looking forward to V3!! It’s the beginning of the week…release it already :)

    • Anonymous

      We promise, it’s coming very very soon!

  • Steve

    Maybe I’m missing it, but is there not a way to look at people’s ratings, as well as their notes, for individual beers? I know there is an overall rating, but it’d be nice to see everybody’s individually. Looking forward to using beer track. Thanks for releasing for Android!

    • Anonymous

      If you go to a person’s profile, you can see all of their ratings by clicking on the Tracks and Ratings section.

      To see every rating a beer has received, you can click the ‘recent actions’ button on the beer detail.