Online restaurant reservation service OpenTable recently announced its purchase of mobile app Foodspotting, in an effort to create a more social and visual-focused platform.
The Foodspotting app, which allows users to submit and browse pictures of their favorite meals, will continue to run as its own product. Currently, Foodspotting allows users (and foodies) to search for certain types of dishes within a particular city or geographic area.
Users can also log into Foodspotting with their Facebook accounts so they can see what restaurants and dishes their friends like, and then share their favorites with others.
For businesses, Foodspotting offers a number of tools including photo contests, giveaways, and city restaurant guides. Foodspotting is also working on a way for restaurants to claim their own pages so they can have more control over what is displayed.
The photo on the left above shows an OpenTable page that includes reviews, reservation options, and a photo from Foodspotting. The photo on the right shows the same photo on a Foodspotting page, which includes the user name and when the photo was added, along with how many other users have loved the post. Foodies, in particular, will really love this feature.
For restaurant owners, this news could mean the addition of some interactive features on the popular reservation platform. By integrating Foodspotting photos and data, the OpenTable experience could become smarter and a little more personal. Instead of simply going to OpenTable to make a reservation, users could submit photos of their favorite dishes or exchange other information about local restaurants.
OpenTable already had a partnership in place with Foodspotting. The site used some user-submitted photos from the app on its restaurant reservation pages, and Foodspotting users were able to make OpenTable reservations within the app.
OpenTable agreed to purchase Foodspotting for $10 million, and the ten-person team will be joining the team at OpenTable. Foodspotting is based in San Francisco and was originally founded in 2009.
Ti Roberts
Wow, this is really awesome. I’ll definitely be using this app. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Ti
Jeffrey Summers
You can’t put enough lipstick on the OT pig to get it to look or smell better. Discounts & coupons are still value killers for operators. OT wouldn’t understand engagement if it crawled under their table and died. R.I.P. Foodspotting.
AL POE
I’d like to tell the story of how investors have been duped out of $10 million plus dollars by Foodspotting that makes claims of memberships and food spots that are 30 percent supermarket boxed foods and dish at home. Yes I’m a disgruntle user that has spent hundreds of hours research this scam. take a look at one super market http://www.foodspotting.com/places/201739-publix-shoppes-at-new-tampa-wesley-chapel/latest and there’s thousands of these out there which there very aware of, but only encourage this to bump up there numbers to keep investors happy. They have thousands of users with zero spots of food they keep to boast we have x amount of members and x amount of spots. Please help me tell this story before Yahoo buys them as rumors in the media pages have it. The top users on this site have had enough and I can share links on there own site to show the displesure of hundreds of members that spend thousands of dollars on meals to produce quality shots and hundreds of hour posting them only to have the Foodspotting team turn a blind eye to our requests on not having supermarket type photos allowed. If you don’t want this story please pass this one to someone who can help. Thanks,,, AL POE
[Edited by Editor]