I’m a heavy user of both, there’s space for both to co-exist and each can learn from the other. I think there’s far more for RB to learn from UT so I’m glad this thread is here to counter the other one, where we concluded that stats, and to a certain degree places, were pretty much the only things RB does better.
It’s gonna be a long list, and 90% of these I’ve talked about here in the past in various threads, to varying degrees of interest from other members, and usually no interest from RB staff. So don’t hold your breath for anything to come from this thread but I guess we shouldn’t lose hope either.
- Both the website and app are very fast
- Rapid development of the app - app is stable and frequently updated. Beta testers usually receive new builds multiple times per week, bugs are fixed soon after they are reported.
- Proper vintage and variant handling - the “fake vintage” problem still exists but is now finally being addressed and brewers can now say how they want these vintages dealt with (when a year is not visible on the label).
- Streamlined corrections/dupe reporting system. The current data is presented in a form where users can simply edit the data and submit for admin review. For dupes, you can search for the duplicate beer and submit for admins to confirm/reject the merge. Merges that affected your checkins are shown under your account page along with the reason.
- Collaborative brews a brewery was part of are shown on the brewer’s page even if it wasn’t brewed at their site.
- Ability to checkin a beer with serving type, location, photo
- Ability to “tick” without review or rating, just to say you’ve had a beer (ok so I don’t care about this personally but some people want this here so we can call it a feature I guess)
- Incredibly powerful wishlist and custom lists feature for beers, brewers and venues with detailed filtering, sorting, and searching options on them.
- Live taplists/stocklists for verified venues/shops
- Thousands of breweries manage their pages/beers themselves, reducing the need for user input where errors are more likely to occur.
- Venue subscriptions for notifications of new beers and/or events
- Venue database is provided by Foursquare which itself has millions of active users and a similar correction submitting procedure, so the accuracy and completeness of the database is arguably better than RB.
- Beer subscriptions can tell me when a beer is at a venue near me
- If you mark yourself as going to an event you can add it to your calendar app on your phone for ease of reminders/planning. (aside from this, RB actually does events better since any user can create)
- Localisation handled properly and not forced to American ideals. I can choose the date/time format, distance units, set the radius of the area I consider to be “local” to me.
- I can allow breweries to comment on my checkins if they wish, so they can request additional feedback if they so desire (rarely see this happening to be honest but it’s a useful feature).
- Sustainable business model. Income generated from verified venues, merch store, partnered badges/offers… much better than relying on advertising.
