PublicEarth definitely looks like a cool site, and I did a quick search for my neighborhood in Brooklyn and found some places I had never heard of and might want to check out.

At the same time, I still think there's a place for human edited and vetted websites that share "hidden gems". I sometimes find so much content ovewhelming, and I can imagine that a site like PublicEarth, still in its infancy, might eventually have so much content that it becomes almost useless. In other words, when there are 1000 restaurants listed in my nieghborhood, it's really no different than a phonebook.

An alternative to this model, which I admit is extremely time intensive, is our website, http://www.darngooddigs.com. Like PublicEarth, travelers suggest their favorite places - in our case, they are small hotels, b&b's, and hostels with rooms under US$150, but unlike PublicEarth, we actually research each suggestion, and only choose the best to feature on Darn Good Digs. We will never have 5 million listings, because the process is simply too time consuming, but that's not we want either. We're going for quality at the expense of quantity.

I think PublicEarth seems really cool, but in order for me to bookmark it there will need to be some way for the best content to rise to the top.

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