Foodspotting, a SXSW BizSpark finalist, launches iPhone app that lets you see the foods around you

Foodspotting is a visual local guide that lets you find dishes instead of just restaurants. Powered by people who take pictures of their food for badges and recognition, Foodspotting makes finding good food easier by letting you see the foods around you.

While the Foodspotting website has been in beta since mid-January and has attracted over 15,000 food sightings, cofounders Alexa Andrzejewski and Ted Grubb are excited to be launching the full Foodspotting iPhone app today because Foodspotting was meant for mobile from the start.

Inspired by a trip to Japan and Korea, where Alexa realized how many foods we never hear about in the US, Foodspotting was meant to be a better way for people to discover new foods and find specific foods around them. With existing local guides, finding food can feel more like research than discovery.

With Foodspotting, you can simply launch the app and literally see the food around you. It makes choosing what to eat, whether you're looking at foods near you or checking out what's good at a particular restaurant, as easy as looking in a bakery window.

To make this possible, Foodspotting harnesses something people were already doing, taking pictures of their food and showing them off to their social networks, by giving it a name and recognizing the titles people were informally claiming anyway with Expert Badges (like "Ramen Expert") and the ability to recommend ("Nom") more foods within Foodspotting.

You can use the Foodspotting website to showcase your badges and reputation points, follow people, places & foods, link your Twitter & Foursquare accounts (more integrations are in the works), and create guides for others, features that will also be added to the iPhone app in the near future.

Foodspotting will be celebrating the launch of their iPhone app at South by Southwest, where they're finalists in the Microsoft BizSpark Accelerator, with a Street Food Fest & Scavenger Hunt on Saturday 3/13 (across from the convention center). They're also inviting people to contribute to their open, mobile guide to What to Eat at SXSW.

Download the Foodspotting iPhone app:
http://www.foodspotting.com/iphone

Learn more about Foodspotting and the team:
http://www.foodspotting.com/about

Statements

Foodspotting was founded in 2009 by Alexa Andrzejewski, a User Experience Designer from Adaptive Path, and Ted Grubb, a Rails Engineer behind Get Satisfaction on the following principles:

1. It's just about the food: It's not about the place, price, surroundings, crowd or nutritional value — it's just about good food and where to find it.

2. Good food can be found anywhere: We built Foodspotting to work in any city, small town or country from the start. It encourages exploration — trying new things vs. following the crowd.

3. Meaningful ratings: The blue ribbon (the "nom") means more because it's hard to get. Foodspotters earn the right to nom foods by demonstrating expertise and building up reputation points.

4. Not every food, just the good food: Foodseekers aren't interested in the foods that you hate, they want to know what you love. We believe people will tend to spot the foods that they like and to nom the foods that are amazing.

5. Celebrates and integrates with what you're already doing: Whether you take photos of every meal or are a self-proclaimed expert in a certain dish, we want to reward what you're already doing and make it useful to a broader community.