I was just looking over the keyword searches that have been bringing people to the blog and nearly 50% of all searches are for "SeamlessWeb promo code," "SeamlessWeb coupons," or "SeamlessWeb discounts" or some similar variation.  We have been giving away a lot of discounts and promotion codes through the blog, but I thought this would be a good time to remind everyone about our Delicious Discounts program, where hundreds of restaurants are offering 20% discounts to customers who haven't ordered from them before.  These discounts are a great incentive for you to discover some new restaurants and the 20% off covers the tip, meaning ordering for delivery through SeamlessWeb is even cheaper than picking up the food yourself!

So please do stay tuned to the blog for more promotions and discounts in the future, but remember: there are hundreds of discounts waiting for you right now!  Just look for the save 20% icons on step 2... enjoy!

Well, even though it's not officially winter yet, it sure feels like it. It's been cold, cold, cold in New York with snow flakes making sporadic appearances. We could all learn from the squirrel in cold times like these - plan ahead and stay inside! Just place your breakfast, lunch, or dinner orders on SeamlessWeb about 45 minutes to an hour before you plan on eating and avoid the cruel winter chill.

By the way, if anyone gets the reference we're using in the title of this entry, email it to mjohnson@seamlessweb.com for the chance to win some SW gear.

Over Thanksgiving weekend we launched a cool new ‘tagging’ feature on all versions of SeamlessWeb.

What is tagging?

Tagging is a great feature that is used on many other popular social networking sites. A strong example is Flickr.com, a picture sharing site. On Flickr, people can ‘tag’ photos with any number of keywords that describe the photo. By doing this, they make it easier for other people to find pictures that feature whatever the ‘tag’ is. For example: this photo has been tagged by Flickr users with 'dog, pet, bearded collie’ etc, so it will show up in the results for anyone searching for these words.

How does tagging work on SeamlessWeb?

By adding the ability to ‘tag’ dishes on SeamlessWeb menus, you can share what you know about each dish with everyone else in the SeamlessWeb community.

Submitting Tags:

When you mouse-over an item, there is a small icon to the right of the item name . When you click on that icon, you’ll see a page where you can submit your ‘tags’ for that item. For example, you might add the word ‘crispy’ for your favorite calamari dish, ‘spicy’ for a particularly hot Thai dish, or maybe ‘sausage peppers onions mushrooms pepperoni' for a supreme pizza. There really are no rules here - just use tags that are helpful and relevant to the dish. You can add as many tags as you want- just type a string of words, separated by a space (no commas necessary).

Displaying Tags:

Users who mouse-over an item will see the tags that have been submitted for the item by other users (just below the regular item description).

At the top of each menu, you’ll see a 'tag cloud' which displays the most frequently applied tags for that menu. Clicking any of the tags in the tag cloud will highlight all items on the menu below that have been tagged with that word. Check out this example.

We’re really excited about this feature and hope you are too. Adding tags should go a long way towards organizing the collective wisdom of all SeamlessWeb users so you’ll be more informed about each of the millions of dishes on SeamlessWeb.

Yet it’s not enough for us to just add the feature to the site – tagging is a social feature that depends on the input of great users like you to help it reach its full potential, so get taggin’!

This weekend, we launched a cool new enhancement to the menus on SeamlessWeb - most popular dishes! We're highlighting the 10 most frequently ordered items on each menu (with a cute little red star) and listing them to the right of each menu. The most popular dishes are totally dependent on the SeamlessWeb community - whatever the people order the most shows up - so not only can you benefit from knowing which dishes are popular, you can help decide!

We like to think that this is yet another way SeamlessWeb makes ordering delivery food easier and smarter. Let us know what you think by dropping a comment!

Looks like New York is in for some rain over the next couple of days, which is great news for umbrella salespeople and SeamlessWeb.

We love the rain because everyone stays inside and orders food. Now, you already know that ordering on SeamlessWeb will expedite the submission of your order to the restaurant on a day like this, but did you ever consider placing your order an extra 15-20 minutes early? Delivery food veterans like the SeamlessWeb staff know that rain and snow can slow down delivery guys on their way to your door so we always order early and give the restaurants a little more leeway than we might on a normal day.

Speaking of umbrellas, we’ll mail a limited-edition SeamlessWeb umbrella for free to anyone who wants one*. Just email your name and address to myseamlessweb@seamlessweb.com.

Update- sorry folks, we're fresh out of umbrellas for the moment.  We'll let you know when we get more in.  Thanks to the hundreds of people who have asked for a SeamlessWeb umbrella!

* While supplies last

Since we've started publishing user reviews for each restaurant, we've been getting tons of great, helpful reviews every day. Of course, we've also gotten a lot of not-so-great, not-so-helpful reviews. Too many for us to manage, in fact. So in the spirit of community, we've decided to give the power to the people (umm, you) to decide which reviews should stay and which should go.

Now when you click the 'User Reviews' tab on a restaurant's page, you will see links next to each review that allow you to label it as helpful or not helpful. The total number of clicks appears in parentheses, letting you know which reviews your fellow SeamlessWebers have found most and least helpful. The most recent reviews display at the top by default, but you have the option of sorting by most helpful or highest rated if you prefer.

We hope this will make the thousands of user reviews that we're displaying more useful when deciding where or what to eat. As always, let us know what you think by posting a comment below.

Using SeamlessWeb got a little bit faster today, as we updated our cookies to skip returning users who don't use the corporate site past the homepage.  This should streamline the ordering experience for returning members who allow cookies on their browsers.

Edit: I neglected to mention that you may need to erase the SeamlessWeb cookies saved in your browser, restart the browser, and then visit SeamlessWeb.com again for these changes to take effect.

Let us know if you have any issues by posting a comment.