The Rabbit Feed - The Social Food edition(Updated September 2011)

The Rabbit Feed on social food"Remember last year when it seemed like everyone was doing a location-based mobile app?", asked Techcrunch on 23 August, highlighting the latest area of social media at risk of over-crowding: Food.

Techcrunch made its comment around the launch of Forkly, a new iPhone app that allows you to post restaurant reviews (http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/23/forkly-app/) from your phone.

The crowded space Forkly enters includes the current leader Foodspotting, Nosh, and - if you want to show off your own culinary creations as opposed to restaurant food, Yumalicio.us.   

We've devoted this issue of The Rabbit Feed to giving an overview of a sector that may be in its infancy, but is growing in importance.   

1 - What are these applications and how do they work? 2 - What networks / apps exist now? 3 - Will it work? 4 - Should you care? 5 - Further reading

1 - What are these applications and how do they work?

Think Foursquare / Gowalla + Tripadvisor + Instagram and you have a pretty good idea.

To take Foodspotting as an example (http://www.foodspotting.com/about): 

You download a smartphone app (iPhone, Android, Windows and coming soon blackberry) or access the website and sign up for an account.   

If using a smartphone, the app determines your location and shows you nearby spots - pictures of dishes other users have taken.    

You in turn also take pictures, tag them by location, and 'nom' them (basically thumb them up).   The more reviews you take and are liked by other users, the more reputation points you earn.

Like most networks these days, you can link Foodspotting with your Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook accounts and find people to follow.     

Or you can link Foodspotting with the photo-sharing network Instagram, with the result that any Instagram picture taken with the hashtags #food or #foodspotting posts direct to Foodspotting as well.   

Finally, you can access and create guides on Foodspotting.  These are a little like the trips feature on Gowalla, with the difference obviously being that each location-based guide will revolve around a series of restaurants or places to eat.  

2 - What networks / apps exist now?

Foodspotting (http://www.foodspotting.com) is the leader (so far) in this space.   

Foodspotting says it is as much about dishes (you seek out a dish you want to eat)  as about restaurants.    Foodspotting also actively encourages you to post the experiences you've loved, as opposed to the ones you've hated.   This may prevent a Tripadvisor type situation where some smaller hotels shun the hotel-ratings website because of the impact one bad review can have on their business.   

Nosh (http://www.nosh.me/) - Backed by Firespotter Labs (which significantly has backing from Google), Nosh says it is a mix of Foursquare and (local reviews service) Yelp, which makes it broadly similar to Foodspotting (http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/nosh-me/).  

Unfortunately for European users, Nosh is for now available via the US iTunes store only.     Mashable did give it a lukewarm review, saying the launch had failed to gain traction but that the discovery process had some merit (http://mashable.com/2011/07/14/nosh-me/)

Ness - Ness is to restaurant reviews what Amazon is to book reviews.   Rate restaurants between 1-5 and you are served up further recommendations (http://techcrunch.com/2011/08/25/ness/)

Yumalicio.us (http://yumalicio.us/ - smartphone app coming soon) works a little differently to some of the other networks.   Rather than post pictures of food that someone else has made for you in a restaurant, you post images of the food you have made yourself.  (http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/08/17/yumalicio-us-a-social-network-to-show-off-your-culinary-creations/)  

Because of the way it works, a network like Yumalicio.us would seem to have some potential - just think of the size of the recipe industry, and the countless possibilities for commercial partnerships.

Spoondate (www.spoondate.com) is a social network that, as the name says, matches a love of food with dating.   You sign in with your Facebook account (http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/08/31/spoondate-dating-site-for-foodies/), fill out a food profile about yourself, and connect with other users.

CNN however says that Spoondate so far has had real problems in getting significant levels of engagement out of users.   Out of 1000 beta users, only 30 regularly updated their so-called 'food cravings.'

Forkly - Forkly appears to be the most credible competitor to Foodspotting.  

Set up by the founders of Brightkite (a location based network that pre-dates Foursquare), Forkly works in broadly the same way as Foodspotting, but maps out a 'taste graph' based on your history, which then puts forward recommendations of things to try - Foodspotting apparently has a similar feature in the works.

Significantly, Forkly puts less of an emphasis on photos than Foodspotting with its Instagram integration.   Forkly says the photos are optional, it is your tastes and opinions that count.  (http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/23/forkly/).  For now, Forkly works on the iPhone and asks you to log in via your Twitter account.

3 - Who is using it?

It is still early days for this sector, but in August, Foodspotting announced that it had passed one million downloads in eighteen months.  

That is modest, when you consider that Instagram netted eight million+ users in almost half the time, but Foodspotting has made some smart commercial deals, such as user photos being featured on restaurant review site Zagat, and promises various enhancements in the pipeline.

ReadWriteWeb also says that Foodspotting has also got a certain amount of international pick-up with 10,000 dishes being uploaded in SE Asia for example.     

4 - Will it work?

Foodspotting is out of the start-up stage and Forkly looks promising.  They could end up becoming the Foursquare and Gowalla of the social food worlds.    In general though, we do think the sector has a future, though some of the current networks will vanish or get swallowed up by competitors.

For starters, smartphones are now for a lot of people their main cameras - its easy to point, click and share even at dinner.   Secondly, Tripadvisor, which of course rates hotels and is one of the largest travel sites in the world, proves that there is a market for reviews in the hospitality industry.  Thirdly, the whole business of online reviews rests on the fact that people often believe the opinion of another consumer than a so-called industry expert.   

Should you care?

As mentioned, one million downloads is healthy, but not huge.   Supposing that there are no more than 100k Foodspotting users in the UK, should you care?   If you are in the hospitality and entertainment industry, yes.

In the social media space, you generally look at how people are using a network and who they are, as well as how many are using it.  

There is for example evidence that users of location based networks, spend more retail pounds, euros and dollars than other consumers.

Likewise, anyone motivated enough to download an application and post up food reviews of their latest restaurant experience is more likely to eat out in the 1st place.  They are likely to care about the quality of their food, and to tell their friends about it.   At risk of using a well-worn term, they are influencers in this space.

Added to that, networks like Foodspotting don't need Facebook like numbers to succeed.   Even several thousand posts in a major city gives it a certain critical mass.  When randomly opening up the Foodspotting map on our phones in several areas of London we regularly saw a half dozen or so places that had Foodspotting reviews within a half mile radius.

5 - Further reading

Foodspotting spikes to one million downloads in eighteen months (ReadWriteWeb) http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/foodspotting_spikes_to_1_million_users_in_18_month.php

Brightkite founders launch Forkly, a fun app for foodies (Venture Beat) http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/23/forkly/

Foodspotting Friday, our photo obsession (ecosalon) http://ecosalon.com/foodspotting-friday-our-food-photo-obsession-143/

The next wave of food finding apps (appolicious) http://www.appolicious.com/tech/articles/9053-the-next-wave-of-food-finding-apps

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