FOHBOH: Chowhound and Yelp Meet The Kitchen’s Back Door
I’ve definitely seen my share of niche social networks. Every time I flip through the NY Times Sunday business section, it seems there’s a new article about social network for some group - Irish Firefighters have a little section of Firefighter Nation and Baby Boomers have probably a dozen choices (although I don’t know a single one that uses anything outside of Facebook or LinkedIn). So, when I learned about FOHBOH (”Front of house, back of house”), a social network for restauranteurs, last week, I was pretty impressed, because the network was behavior-driven, like LinkedIn or Facebook, rather than demographic-driven, like some of the new boomer social networks or social networks for children.
This past Saturday night, an old friend asked me, “There are so many new social networks out there; how do you gauge which ones are going to survive?” I think that the ones that are purpose-driven are the ones that are going to make it, long-term. For example, when I want to learn more about a prospective client, I usually turn to LinkedIn. When I want to figure out which PR or social media industry events I should attend, I check out Facebook or Upcoming. Those are purpose-driven visits. (So, advertisers trying to reach me in that way should rely on behavioral targeting.)
I’ve worked in restaurants through much of high school and college; when you’re 18 or 20 years old, making $15 an hour, in cash, is a pretty appetizing proposition. Through working at the Peninsula Creamery Fountain and Grill (still totally awesome) in Palo Alto and the now-defunct Ovens of Brittany in Madison, Wisconsin, I learned how to wait tables, bartend and do some food preparation. And I definitely met some really interesting characters. That’s a little bit of what I see on FOHBOH; it’s a place for restaurant owners, servers, sommeliers, vendors and wine reps to come together, and have really frank conversations. And the place is just vibrant; although it only has a little over 2000 members right now, typically 15 to 50 people are logged in at any one time, and the conversational level is pretty high - when one member solicits feedback on their blog, people respond.
Besides the obvious purpose-driven social networking and business-networking opportunities, FOHBOH reminds me of a very insider version of Zagat’s or Yelp. When you go into a MySpace Group and “eavesdrop” on the conversation, you frequently feel like you’re sitting in the quad of a high school or college campus; when you “eavesdrop” on FOHBOH, you feel you’re sitting at the bar in a restaurant that closed an hour ago, having a beer with the manager. And that’s the kind of totally candid feedback that I want, as a consumer, when I’m trying to get the lead on whether a restaurant is the real deal, or when I have a serious food question.
Jeremy at LaunchSquad turned me on to Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential; that was the book for the kitchen’s back door. Now, I feel like I’ve discovered where those conversations happen in real time.
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