I don't know but I am guessing there are a few different players in what I call the specific check in space, but I only know one: FoodSpotting. And if there are others, FoodSpotting sure has the best seat in the house. Checking into a book, or movie or music is not actually checking in. It is not location specific. The Like button by any other name.
Much of the special going out involves eating and drinking for many people. And each such check in place, by definition, is a business. Caching. As opposed to when someone checks into Central Park - and people do - that is hard to monetize. Street vendors: don't count on them.
I did a post on FoodSpotting weeks back. (FoodSpotting Is The Next FourSquare) And I have been meaning to do a few more posts on fractals for a while now. So I figured this might be a good time to tie the two together again and make my foray into fractals.
Image via CrunchBaseThis is one of my all time favorite posts: Fractals: Apple, Windows 95, Netscape, Google, Facebook, Twitter. This page gets page hits on a daily basis.
If you think about it, checking in is too broad. It is like saying the conversation stops after you say hello to me. The truth is the conversation merely begins at that point. And the specific check in space is more in tune with that suggestion.
An application like FoodSpotting comes across to me as custom made for the semantic web where you will be able to discover all sorts of relationships beneath the surface while the data collection takes place at the surface. It does not hurt that the data collection is visually appealing. And it does not hurt that the data collection is crowd sourced. It has slave labor written all over it.
At the end of the day what FoodSpotting is is an augmented reality app. FourSquare does check in well. FoodSpotting does the specific check in really well. There are numerous verticals in that space, but I think FoodSpotting has the royal vertical already cornered.
ReadWriteWeb
Foodspotting: Foursquare meets Food Porn
Seed Funding for Foodspotting Brings More Praise for AngelList: a $750,000 round of seed funding led by Felicis Ventures, with participation from 500 Startups, High Line Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures and 2020 Ventures. Today's announcement follows the launch of an updated website, a new iPhone app, and media partnerships with Travel Channel and Zagat..... CEO Alexa Andrzejewski .... another strong startup endorsement of Nivi and Naval's AngelList, who according to Andrzejewski, "helped us identify such well-aligned investors." ..... AngelList helped cut through the noise of all the VC and angel investors, offered a "roadmap," and helped give her the confidence to navigate and negotiate this round of funding..... Foodspotting is putting today's funding to use with making several strategic hires. Additionally, it is in the process of opening its headquarters in San Francisco's SoMa district, a live/work loft with a full kitchen for hosting eat-ups and No Reservations watching parties.
Foodspotting & Zagat Partner to Share Restaurant Photos and Guides: Zagat has the largest brand presence on Foursquare with over 51,000 friends......"In our most recent New York City survey, 85% of respondents said that they look at a restaurant's menu before going," says Nina Zagat, co-founder of Zagat Survey. "By providing users with Foodspotting photos on their mobile devices, we'll be giving them a chance to actually see the food as well. "
The Evolution of Foodspotting & its Plans to Expand Beyond Food: Foodspotting launched last November and has quickly built up a passionate following of foodies..... the company's surprising plans to expand beyond food. ..... The original idea was inspired by my traveling to Japan and Korea, where I learned about all of these different foods that I'd never heard about growing up. So my original idea was to create a way for people to learn about new foods around the world and then find those foods locally. ..... We had the idea of the mobile device being less like a phone and more like a lens on the world, that shows you more information about things around you. .... In August of 2009 I started looking in earnest for a co-founder who could do the technological part. .... A way to stumble upon good things around you, wherever you go. .... but we'd like to do food well first, because it's the natural fit. .... People who post food, the foodspotters, there's 65,000 of them. We have 300,000 app users in total. .... We get between 8 and 10 thousand [app] launches a day. And we get up to a thousand [food] sightings per day..... at the moment, we've definitely skewed towards 20-30 year old female Asians. ..... Foodspotting is going to become a lot smarter. So when you launch the app, instead of just seeing the nearest, latest or best foods - you will see things that are recommended for you based on your social graph and on the kinds of food you've viewed in the past.
Google Adds Place-Ranking System, Should Yelp Be Afraid?
5 Check-in Apps to Check Out
iTunes Features Location Apps with New "On the Grid" Section
Hungry? The State of Food Recommendation Engines
7 Stories About Women Heroes in Tech: This Spring, Alexa Andrzejewski left design firm Adaptive Path to work full time on her startup FoodSpotting......Perhaps the whole hero-style narrative is a bad idea, unhelpful to community collaboration just like Kaliya Hamlin argues the "war" metaphor is in rhetoric like "the identity war." "I think what is seen as heroic is a narrative of the lone cowboy," Hamlin said to me today. "Teams and communities who foster innovation and achieve together are often not seen and therefor not honored in the same way."
Foodspotting on Travel Channel from Foodspotting on Vimeo.
How To Catch A Crab from Foodspotting on Vimeo.
Introducing Team Foodspotting from Foodspotting on Vimeo.
Foodspotting San Francisco New Office Tour from Foodspotting on Vimeo.
What is Foodspotting? from Foodspotting on Vimeo.
No comments:
Post a Comment