When students are at loss as to where to go for dinner on a typical Saturday night, they often resort to searching for nearby restaurants on Swarm, the location-search and check-in app formerly known as Foursquare. Swarm enables users to publicize their location, while a built-in GPS allows them to find their way to venues. Although Swarm can perform this role, the less mainstream app Zomato recently proved more effective at finding and recommending restaurants to its users.

Users can work through Zomato by searching for key words such as the actual name of the restaurant or the location for a list of the most relevant places out of which the users can then select a destination. Zomato also can connect to Google Maps as to allow interested users to easily find their way. Although the accuracy of the locations is not always precise, given the specificity of some of the addresses, it is still much better than that of Swarm, which invites users to make new locations on a whim and edit the addresses of different places.

Zomato is also effective at catering to users’ needs because it gives different options for specifying search terms. For instance, users can first choose between “Delivery” and “Dine out”, to can narrow down their results. Once they do, they can find desired dishes, cuisines and facilities with ease. By the “Discover” option, users can further specify their desires, and search for the location of their preference. Swarm, on the other hand, does not offer such features because it is not an app specifically designed to find dining options for its users.

Even though Zomato does not have coverage for some of the more remote regions in the world, its content is thorough for the restaurants and regions that it does cover. In addition to the address, Zomato also provides users with the restaurant’s phone number, pictures and the price of an average meal. Despite the amount of information provided, Zomato could be improved by including ratings from users, for prices of dishes do not always reflect their quality. For instance, the expensive price of a particular meal could be justified by the excellent service and facilities, but when users see only the price as listed on Zomato, it could look unreasonably expensive.

People get so used to using the most mainstream apps available that they often forget to try new apps. In this case, although Swarm serves multiple purposes, Zomato is more specific and effective for those looking for an exemplary culinary experience. It could be safe to assume that the most used apps are often of highest quality, but trying out different apps will give users a far more diverse experience with their daily lives.