Mobile dining apps for foodies on the go, LocalEats and BiteHunter, are today announcing a new content-sharing partnership. Starting now, LocalEats’ users looking for a dining deal will see information from BiteHunter’s deals database, while BiteHunter’s users will see a restaurant synopsis provided by LocalEats.
Since both apps are operating in the same space, but are not direct competitors, this type of partnership makes sense. Maybe more app developers should do the same?
In the updated applications, you can see a “powered by BiteHunter” banner in LocalEats deals sections and, in BiteHunter, LocalEats is listed among other dining resources, including Yelp.
The partnership should help these relative newcomers to the mobile dining space, who don’t have the brand name recognition of a Zagart or Urbanspoon. But it has a secondary benefit too: it helps to introduce an app’s users to another app they may also like.
You often see app cross-promotion through mobile ads and other app monetization and distribution deals, but you don’t as regularly see app promotions through content sharing deals. But such initiatives should be more common – apps aren’t a zero sum game. Users can (and do) install multiple apps that serve similar purposes.
Within the over-crowded photo app community, for example, some developers recently began participating in app cross promotion through the PhotoAppLink initiative, which lets users export photo edits between apps directly, without having to save first to the camera roll. Even though, like BiteHunter and DealHunter, all the participants are after the same type user (in this case, photo editors, not foodies), the idea is that working together may have more of an advantage than independent marketing efforts alone would have had.
So, more of this please, app developers! And even better, let users tap on an app’s icon from within your app to open another app directly. And then tap again to go back. It’s not like it can’t be done…remember?