The idea was a way to show people the best food in Japan beyond sushi — to literally show them, in picture form. Then the thought morphed into writing to a book, where the best food in the world was shown. But that’s a lot of travel for one person. So the thought became, why not crowdsource it? That’s Foodspotting.
Foodspotting is an application that allows you to take picture of a food, say what it is, and pin it (with geolocation) to the restaurant where you got it. You may wonder who would use such an app — but just think for a second about how many of your friends on Twitter tweet out pictures of food. People have been doing this long before Foodspotting, this app just gives them more of an incentive to do so, and let’s them organize it.
It’s also one hell of a new food discovery tool. And that’s exactly why the team behind it, Alexa Andrzejewski and Ted Grubb, hustled to get the official iPhone app done in time for the SXSW festival, which starts next week in Austin, Texas. With it, you’ll be able to use the “Guides” to easily find (and contribute to) the best foods in Austin. The Foodspotting team put together a few of these guides (including a scavenger hunt, and a street food one), but other users have already created others as well.
From these guides, you can easily mark which foods you “want” to bookmark them for later. You can also note which foods you’ve already eaten (“nommed”). Of course, you can also use the app to search for a particular food or restaurant. Or simply scroll through the pictures on the main screen to see a stream of food (which can be sorted by “latest,” “nearest,” “best,” etc). And yes, you can use a map view to see the food too.
When you yourself spot a food, you can tweet it out to your followers. Or, thanks to Foursquare’s relatively new API, you can also check-in to a venue simply by foodspotting (yes, the service hopes the name becomes a common verb).
It’s one of the most interesting location-based plays that will be on display at SXSW — a conference that will be rife with location-based services. But Foodspotting is a bit different because they’re not aiming to be a location platform like Foursquare or Gowalla. Instead, they’re happy to use location to augment their own reality-based game. That is, after all, essentially what Foodspotting is. Just like with the other two aforementioned location services, you earn some badges for tagging certain types of foods in pictures (they called them “Expert Badges”). And you earn others for participating in the Guides. And, of course, there are points for doing all of this.
While the “lite” version of the app has been available in the App Store for a few months, the team has done little to promote it, waiting instead until the full version, which launches today in the App Store. Still, the lite version (and the very nice-looking website) proved that there’s a demand for this service. Already, Foodspotting has seen over 15,000 foodspottings. Top cities include San Francisco, New York, and Honolulu.
So how do you make money off of this idea? That’s a question the Foodspotting team has had to answer a lot recently, as they’re currently in the process of raising a seed round of funding. The natural idea is to become popular enough that restaurants and brands want to partner with the service to promote themselves. ”It’s kind of like pumping a scent out of your bakery window to draw people in,” Andrzejewski says. Already, the service is teaming up with 7×7, an insider’s guide to food in San Francisco to show how a partnership could work (it’s a non-paid partnership, for now).
The iPhone app, created for Foodspotting by EGG HAUS, Inc, is available today in the App Store for free. Find it here. Eventually, the plan is to expand to the other mobile platforms as well.
Nice. I like pictures of tasty food a lot!
Nice app! But I like this new food app better…Chevia, but they are only in SF Bay Area.
Chevia Food Discovery will be going nationwide in about 1 week and there will be ways to spot foods at arbitrary locations as well.
Check this out: http://www.chevia.com/
The first version of the app has just launched today. It allows you to do what Foodspotting could do but it also gives you more ways to explore food items.
Android app please
Great idea! In due time I’m sure.
:)
The best news for this one will be: Yelp bought foodspotting. Now that’s pretty cool!
Yelp can suck my balls.
I must concur – those tea baggers at Yelp can suck my balls too
There is an Android app called “foodr”. It’s the same idea. Users can post pictures of great dishes they had on Google Map.
http://www.androlib.com/android.application.com-foodiepix-ui-qqDC.aspx
And Symbian, too?
I’m obsessed with Foodspotting:
http://foodspotting.com/andrew
I’m going to follow you now Mager! ;)
http://foodspotting.com/abbott
Great post MG!
Yo! Congrats on the app!
Have you guys also seen the following app by a local bay area developer http://www.talkplate.com
Great Idea. But due to lack of monetization potential, it will basically be, as VC’s would call it – Another Hobby site.
But don’t get me wrong, great site though and I will use it.
I disagree, there are plenty of ways to make money from this service. The best way would be to contact these restaurants and give them premium features on their page. They would probably be willing to pay to get their menu right on the page, post coupons and things like that. Great idea.
Agree!
Looks like a slicked up version of http://eat.ly which was partly started by Mike Singleton of foursquare (which incorporates the foursquare api to let you do food checkins).
This is similar to ShareUrMeal.com – only each time you upload your meal $1 gets donated to end world hunger.
Dang! Another idea I should have had.
PS to TechCrunch gang. Today’s posts have ROCKED. Lots of great stuff. Thanks.
Cool app. This is needed, it needs improvements. Too much of twitter & facebook have shots of people and their food. I tried to upload a photo & got lost, I could either upload food without a location or a location without food. The @ process needs work.
Its a great app that offers me too much distraction (always being hungry and all makes it much more interesting :) ).
Tim
I can definitely see this type of location-based application catching on. Rather than trying to be another Foursquare or Gowalla, the company’s founders realize the power of focusing on a singular objective.
Foodies are a passionate group. They view a well-prepared meal in the same way that a fashionista views a beautiful dress. As pictures tell a thousand words, if foodspotting scales the service could integrate its images with a service like menupages.
I also see a great opportunity for Foodspotting to tie into the power and viral nature of thisiswhyyourefat.com. In connecting with “This is Why You’re Fat,” Foodspotting would gain access to a vibrant network of foodies already conditioned to snap photos of their eating adventures.
Looks like a quick, scan friendly way to find good looking food in your area. Very interesting. Also like that they’ve chosen the same typeface used for the movie ‘Trainspotting’.
Btw, check out food on Twitter: http://bit.ly/b1fMcg
This kind of photo sharing ability definitely needs to be added to Yelp
I have to confess that I have been an addict since I saw it at Web2.0 Expo. Thanks for all the other great sites in the previous comments as well!
I was thinking about this very thing the other day. One issue I see is that sites like Yelp are already poised to implement this easily. However, a twist to this might be an app where you can review food delivery services, the quality of their packaging and the food on the plate after.
Yelp has stopped innovating, if ever. Following 4sq, now fdspt.
hmm, if this app gets famous, i bet that 2.0 and 3.0megapixels photos will fill up its database.
Apple could have made better camera.
even though there is no iPHone app yet, http://www.dafoodie.com is even easier to use…
In Orlando only?
For now it’s being tested in Orlando. Will go nation-wide soon :)
This is a great idea and appears to be well executed.
Please also check out our new app dishfinders
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dishfinders/id354953487?mt=8
Our app provides a much better way to view dishes at a restaurant and make search nearby restaurants and dishes more easily. Since we just launched, we don’t have a lot of data yet but it will be a lot more useful than a simple sighing app.
I agree