SpotOn, An iPhone App That Recommends Where to Eat and Drink

SpotOn is a new iPhone app that provides quick personalized recommendations for eating and drinking establishments. The app analyzes the user’s Foursquare activity to make the recommendations–future versions will analyze other services such as Facebook. SpotOn is currently only available in Manhattan.

We start by learning about you from the networks you’re already a part of like Facebook and foursquare. We use this information to give you personalized recommendations for restaurants, bars, and coffee shops, in a similar way that Netflix gives recommendations for movies. When you’re deciding on a place to go, we try to help you out by presenting you with actionable triggers (for ex: “5 of your friends have rated this bar highly”, “3 of your friends have saved it”, etc). We find that it’s easier to make a decision by focusing on one or two pieces of compelling information, instead of trying to deal with reading endless reviews or processing a lot of information. After you go to a place, you can rate it on SpotOn and share it with your friends.