People love taking pictures of food. It’s just a fact of life. Don’t even bother arguing about it. It’s just the way it is. Case in point: Foodspotting, the service which asks you to take pictures of your food to share with others. People love this service. Since its initial launch in January 2010 (we first covered it in March), people around the world have “spotted” just about 100,000 different pieces of food.
And now a group of investors have decided to put their money where their mouths are — almost literally. Foodspotting has just secured a new $750,000 seed round of funding. The round was led by Aydin Senkut’s Felicis Ventures and anchored by Dave McClure’s 500 Startups, Shana Fisher’s High Line Venture Partners, Zelkova Ventures, and 2020 Ventures.
Other individual angels include Dave Morin (of Path), Steve Lee (product manager of Google Latitude), Derek Dukes (of Dipity), and Dan Martell (of Flowtown — which also got some funding this morning).
This new money follows a big couple of weeks for Foodspotting. Last week, the new Foodspotting 2.0 website and iPhone app became available. The service was also able to secure deals with both Zagat and The Travel Channel for partnerships that will expand their visibility and functionality (see the commercial below).
While Foodspottings website and iPhone app are almost equal in terms of usage, it’s the app that’s really the key to the service. It is what allows people to be out and about taking pictures of their food and geotagging it. So far, the app has seen over 120,000 downloads.
And the 2.0 version of the app is much more robust than the previous version. In fact, it’s the version Foodspotting always had in mind, co-founder Alexa Andrzejewski says. With it, it’s not only easier to “spot” your own food, but it’s easier to find food around you that you might enjoy.
“This is not just for ‘foodies’ — it’s an app meant to solve a practical problem surrounding location: discovery,” Andrzejewski tells us. “It’s practical augmented reality.” Andrzejewski tells us.
With that in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that Foodspotting is already thinking about expanding their idea beyond food. The service has already purchased the domains sightspotting.com and goodspotting.com for other services they are planning. Andrzejewski wouldn’t elaborate too much except to say that you can expect them to be based around travel in a more general sense.
For now, the focus remains on Foodspotting itself. The company is already putting their money to use by hiring Soraya Darabi to head up business development, Fiona Tang to head up marketing, Marc Powell to work on the iPhone app, and Amy Cao to be a resident food blogger.
They’re also opening an office in the SoMa district of San Francisco where yes, they’ll be hosting eat-ups.
Meanwhile, work began yesterday on an Android app, their first app beyond the iPhone platform. For now, you can find the Foodspotting iPhone app here — it’s a free download.
Below, find the killer spot The Travel Channel is currently running for Anthony Bourdain’s popular No Reservations show.