Are you the ‘check-in’ type of social networker? If so, you might enjoy Oink.
Oink is an app for iPhone that allows users to rate their experiences out in public. The purpose of this is to give people who are unfamiliar with the area or items that establishments sell an idea of where to go or what to get. “With Oink, you don’t rate the places. You rate the things inside.” Four Square does give a similar function with the recommend Explore feature, but Oink is much more of a social network/sharing app. It seems to be much more interactive between the user and the members of the Oink community.
I really like the design of this app. It’s clean and it’s easily understood. I will say that it seems like many social networking apps (Four Square, Oink, Google+, etc.) have similar looks. I think it’s a smart design because it’s easily recognized and understood by users.
Another unique feature this app has is a To Do list. You can add rated items to a To Do list within the app. When you view a rated item, users can simply tap the ‘+ To Do’ button to add items to the list. I find this useful because as you are browsing, you can select items you want to try without having to leave the app or item. Oink users are also encouraged to write mini-reviews of items. On the item details page of the app, there is a ‘Write a new mini review’ button. The mini review is limited to 200 characters, but gives the power to the user to make or break the item.
Oink is a fairly young app. It was released in November 2011 with it’s most recent update on November 16, 2011. It is currently on version 1.0.2. On the Apple iTunes store, it has an average rating of 4.5 stars with 378 users rating it. I could see this app growing to the same popularity ranking as Four Square very quickly.
