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Tag: Foodspotting

  • Foodspotting Joins OpenTable in $10M Deal, Will Continue to Operate on Standalone Basis

    Restaurant reservation powerhouse OpenTable have just announced their intent to acquire food photography-based recommendation app Foodspotting.

    According to a release, the deal will be for $10 million

    OpenTable and Foodspotting have been partners for some time already – OpenTable reservations on Foodspotting and Foodspotting food photography on OpenTable, so this acquisition doesn’t come as a huge surprise. But according to Foodspotting, this is all about better integration:

    “We’ve already been working closely with the OpenTable team as partners: In addition to making restaurant reservations via Foodspotting, you may have seen Foodspotting photos from select restaurants popping up on OpenTable. But we both realized we could create smarter experiences if we could integrate more deeply by, for example, recommending dishes when you make reservations to enabling restaurants to showcase their best dishes. We look forward to augmenting your dining experiences with Foodspotting’s recommendations to forge the shortest path between you and great food,” says Foodspotting co-founder Alexa Andrzejewski.

    Foodspotting users shouldn’t worry – the app will remain a standalone product. Foodspotting says that the only thing that will change is that users will have access to better recommendations and restaurant information.

    “We’re proud to welcome the talented Foodspotting team to the OpenTable family,” said Matt Roberts , Chief Executive Officer of OpenTable. “The Foodspotting team is as passionate about dining as we are, and we’re looking forward to leveraging their unique expertise in the areas of imagery and social sharing to enrich the OpenTable experience for diners and restaurants in new and exciting ways. By adding more visually compelling content to help people decide where to dine and discover dishes they’ll love, we hope to make it even easier to find the perfect table for any occasion.”

  • Foursquare Integrates Foodspotting, Other Apps Into Its Core Service

    Mobile was a big deal a few years ago. Everybody had to move their apps to mobile and bring the desktop experience to consumers on the go. Now everybody is moving towards a mobile ecosystem where our apps are all connected. Facebook has been leading the charge with Open Graph, but foursquare’s attempt at connecting apps over mobile is one of the more interesting yet.

    Location-based social media powerhouse, foursquare, announced their new Connected Apps platform yesterday. They don’t explicitly say that they were influenced by Facebook’s Open Graph, but the idea behind it is the same. Developers can craft their apps to work within foursquare to provide additional information without having to leave the foursquare experience.

    To elaborate, take this example: You are traveling to a local restaurant that you have not been to before. You check in with the foursquare mobile app to let your friends know where you’re at. On the information screen, you have Foodspotting set up within foursquare now to let you know what other people have eaten at that location. So now you have a good idea of what to expect food-wise from this location without having to open another app.

    You can now see why foursquare is pretty excited about the possibilities. Not only do they get great third-party app content on their platform, but they get to keep people using their platform for all their needs. The foursquare gods are benevolent, however, and will provide links to all apps that reside within their platform. The hope is that will drive traffic and adoption between foursquare and all of their partner apps just like Facebook’s Open Graph does.

    The new feature is currently in developer preview, but app developers can check it out now. While foursquare doesn’t have the size of Facebook behind it, it’s definitely more focused. If you have an app that can benefit people visiting new places like restaurants, parks, etc; then you might want to look into developing an app for foursquare.

    The foursquare blog has a list of some services that are already building apps within their platform to take advantage of Connected Apps. The aforementioned Foodspotting is one of the major apps, but there’s also less food oriented apps like The Weather Channel which tells you the current conditions when you check in.

    The new Connected Apps platform is available today on Android and iOS. The last two remaining BlackBerry developers will get access to the SDK and APIs at a later date. It’s important to reiterate that this is a developer preview so everything might not work as intended. The guys at foursquare are hoping to launch the fully-featured version of the Connected Apps platform sometime later this year.

  • Facebook Open Graph Helped Foodspotting Grow

    Facebook Open Graph has helped app developers implement Facebook features like Timeline into their apps. It also apparently drives up traffic in crazy numbers. Today’s success story comes from Foodspotting, the number one app for finding delicious food around you.

    If you have yet to use Foodspotting, I highly recommend it. I never knew there were so many good eats around me until I started using it. It sets itself apart from other similar services by focusing on individual dishes instead of the restaurant as a whole.

    Foodspotting implemented Open Graph in January. The developers implemented a few key changes to the app that took advantage of what Open Graph does for apps. The first change had existing users of the app being encouraged to add Foodspotting to their Timeline.

    Once users agree to have Foodspotting add food stories to their Timeline, the app populates Timeline with their pictures of food they have taken.

    Pretty pictures and Open Graph integration alone aren’t going to drive your app to success. The Foodspotting team used clever action verbs that drived interest in the app. Here are some examples:

    Spot – Dish:
    “Jeff Sherlock spotted a dish”
    Love – Dish:
    “Andy Katzman loved a dish”
    Nom – Dish:
    “Bryant Lee nommed a dish”
    Try – Dish:
    “Tiffany Chang Black tried a dish”
    Want – Dish:
    “Piyush Mangalick wanted a dish”

    The same verbs are used in story aggregations. They immediately draw attention to the dish at hand and drive up usage.

    Since the implementation of Open Graph in January, Foodspotting has seen four times the referrals and twice the number of monthly active users.

    The moral of this story, like so many before it, is that Open Graph is awesome for your apps. As a developer, however, you can’t just rely on Open Graph. You have to use innovative and unique hooks that complement Open Graph to drive traffic to your apps. Foodspotting has done this incredibly well and I’m sure other apps that will be featured in future editions of Developer Spotlight will have done the same.

  • Facebook Drives Traffic To Mobile Apps

    Facebook mobile has been a huge success for the company and it has even brought the riches to mobile app developers who are on Facebook.

    James Pearce took to the Facebook developers blog to give some tips on how developers can grow their mobile apps and games with the Facebook platform. Pearce says that Facebook has 425 million monthly users which in turn sends 60 million users to various mobile apps and games.

    Pearce rightly points out that to be discovered on the app store, one has to already have a presence or some kind of marketing/editorial muscle behind it. Facebook can help those lesser known apps get the traffic they want.

    The most successful apps are those that are built using Open Graph. The use of Timeline combined with Open Graph allows users to share apps naturally by recording their lives for all to see. When something exciting happens in their life, a user can use an Open Graph app to share their experience and the app with their friends.

    As an example, Foodspotting, an app that lets people find, record and recommend food dishes, has seen a three-times increase in traffic since integrating with Open Graph.

    Yahoo! also implemented Open Graph into their desktop Facebook app. It sends traffic to their mobile app as well which has seen the Yahoo! News web app increase its traffic to 1.6 million visitors a day.

    The lesson to take away from this is that integrating your app with Open Graph and Facebook Timeline could increase the traffic your app receives.