Food photo social network FoodSpotting announced this morning that it has passed 1 million app downloads, just over 18 months after the service launched. The announcement came with newly designed, more social and brand-friendly iPhone and Android apps. The company also said that BlackBerry and Windows Phone apps are in the works.
Co-founder and CEO Alexa Andrzejewski told ReadWriteWeb in October that the network had 300,000 app users back then, at roughly nine months after launch. Apparently that number has now more than tripled in the second nine month period the app’s been live.
FoodSpotting is a fun way to share pictures of your favorite food or find food in restaurants near you. According to a study of the phenomenon by researchers at 360i published this May, the most popular reason people provide for photographing their food is to create a “food diary.” 25% of surveyed respondents said this was their motivation, while 3% said it was “extreme food” that inspired their nom-snapping.
The company says the new version of the Foodspotting app will make it much easier than ever before to follow trusted food-related brands like the Travel Channel (cool) or Wolfgang Puck (meh) as you find yourself in places where those brands have restaurant recommendations.
FoodSpotting, The Company
FoodSpotting raised seed funding on the now red-hot investment social network AngelList last Summer (Seed Funding for Foodspotting Brings More Praise for AngelList) then announced this January that it had raised $3 million to build what it calls “the Pandora of food.” (Foodspotting Thinks It’s Ready to Blow Up) The food photo startup’s biggest business partnership is with restaurant review site Zagat, which last August began syndicating FoodSpotting users’ photos. FoodSpotting has seen international traction as well; the company said in January that there had already been 10,000 dishes photographed in South East Asia, for example.
Competitors include Nosh.me and Dinevore. Foodspotting acquired upstart service Eat.ly in December.
In an interview with ReadWriteWeb last October, Foodspotting CEO Alexa Andrzejewski discussed the site’s genesis and its long-term aims to go beyond pictures of food: “…there’s been an interest in people sharing other interesting fine products or travel experiences, like sites to see and things like that,” Andrzejewski said. “In the same way, this idea of being a visual discovery engine could easily extend to other things as well. So that’s something we’re interested in exploring.”
One million users isn’t a huge number for FoodSpotting, but it’s a good milestone and the rate of growth is even more impressive.
This post initially referred to FoodSpotting as having 1 million users, or one million registered users. Various people have pointed out that it is actually 1 million app downloads the company is reporting.
