Laurence Hooper and Dan Goodman (former AOL), created Loladex, a local search application for Facebook.  The two men took some of their AOL earnings and founded Loladex, which launched end of March, 2008.  We added this application to Facebook and were sad to see it was focused on Washington DC; however, once added it immediately pulled up a bunch of local Arizona restaurants. 

With Web 2.0 and users relying on social reviews in their decision making process, this tool is a great idea and integrated with Facebook could become quite succesful.  Loladex combines local search with the recommendation and rating possibilities inherent in social networks. Loladex already has about 16 million listings. The application is able to return localized results based on recommendations and ratings made by Facebook friends.  “Loladex mimics the way people think about things in the off-line world,” Goodman said.

These kind of applications from outside developers have taken advantage of the site’s open application platform.  Check it out at Loladex.