Discover San Diego Restaurants, Nightlife, Hotels and More

You might have noticed that I have a guide to entertainment category. I'm pretty big on going out, enjoying the city's great restaurants, nightlife, and the overall scene. It's very diverse, and that's cool because I've got a diverse group of friends and acquaintances to enjoy it all with.

There are a number of San Diego nightlife guides, San Diego restaurants guides, directories of San Diego hotels... and of course the big aggregators of travel info, as well as the huge national travel guides (aol's, yahoo's, citysearch, etc).

• The Specific Guides - I find these to be ok... but most of them haven't changed much in terms of focus, design (and usability), or interactivity (web2.0 people!) in years. I know how to glean information from these various sources well enough but I think they could all do a better job.
• The Aggregators and National Guides - Large sites that don't really have any unique editorial content in most cases. Some that do, are somewhat complicated to navigate and really use as a resource. They do seem to often have a good amount of user reviews as they probably have quite large visitor bases.

What's Next in online San Diego Entertainment Guides?

I might just have to say that DiscoverSD.com is. There is obviously a lot lacking as the site is new, and has kinks to work out, and needs to grow a LOT to be a significant competitor. But, the foundation is right. The design is cool and refreshing, the layout and content are pretty much right on.

You'll notice there is a San Diego blog with many different specific categories, there is an article archive of featured San Diego articles and browsing the categories like restaurants, nightlife, and shopping will turn up a number of the more upscale and trendy places.

Where I see DiscoverSD diverging from the rest is that it's not just category targeted (dining, hotels, etc), it is niche targeted to people interested in San Diego's upscale offerings. Think 944 magazine meets SignonSanDiego. It's the glitter with a cool online presence, and it avoids the everything to everyone positioning that will never allow larger sites to really catch on with any certain demographic.

What features are in development? Well, just a few of those that I can talk about are:

• Sorting and filtering functionality to make browsing listings totally intuitive
• An Itinerary Generator to help take out the guesswork, just input your neighborhood of choice, and the types of activities you want to do for the day/evening!
• Enhanced mapping functionality (check out our San Diego Blogs on Google Maps for an example).
• Member profiles, private mail, etc
• More user generated content functionality (picture galleries, more reviews/ratings, comments, and more).

That's really about 1/10th of what's in the works in the near-term. I'm excited to see and use this site for hunting down more great places to eat in San Diego, and for more fun things to do. Oh, to start out check out the main San Diego entertainment page which helps you find their listings by neighborhood.