SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Spotsetter (http://spotsetter.com), whose mission is to bring people the best social recommendations on where to go, today announced the release of Spotsetter 1.2 in the iTunes App Store. The AngelPad startup also announced that it has raised $1.3M in total seed funding, led by Javelin Venture Partners and participation from angel investors including Maximilian Thyssen, 2020 Ventures, Rahul Prakash, Entrepreneur and Partner of Coyote Ridge Ventures, and Euthenia Capital.
“Google Maps is great at finding information about places, and social networks like Facebook delight you with your friends’ activities, but no one has brought them together in an engaging and useful way. That's what Spotsetter does,” said Johnny Lee, CEO and Co-Founder of Spotsetter. “We make sense of all your social content and present the most relevant recommendations from people you already know and trust, on a map, wherever you are.”
In answering the popular questions of “where to go?”, and “what's around?”, Spotsetter has also tackled the huge technical feat of creating a robust local search engine from the ground up.
Led by Stephen Tse, CTO, Co-Founder, and former Google Maps engineer, Spotsetter’s engineering team has taken a big data approach to search by creating a unique, patent-pending ranking algorithm that leverages each user’s content across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Foursquare. It also pulls venue content from more than 30 review sites and lists from trusted sources like Yelp, Zagat, New York Times, Michelin, and TripAdvisor.
To date, Spotsetter has processed five million user profiles, 40 million venues, and one million curated venue content across the globe.
“Spotsetter is reinventing maps as a social experience. By taking a big data approach to associate all kinds of information from profiles and activities, they're adding a valuable dimension to maps,” said Noah Doyle, managing director at Javelin Venture Partners and former manager of Google Geo Market Development and Enterprise products. “Combined with an addictive interface, Spotsetter is a bold innovation in the mapping space that will shake up the already exploding mobile local market.”
“To address the social component of maps, Spotsetter has built a powerful search engine, armed with a killer ranking system, so that each user has a personalized index,” said Rahul Prakash, investor in Spotsetter and early executive at Spock, one of the first social search engines. “There are no search engines that do this right now.”
Spotsetter features to note:
Search: Look up any place, category, or keyword for personal results. Your own private index of search terms is constantly refreshed for quick lookups. Type a few letters to see what your friends have said about places around you.
Friends You Trust: To help you find the best spots for specific categories like coffee, shopping, or sushi, Spotsetter highlights recommendations from your friends who are experts in those areas, using its patent-pending ranking system. Users can also influence recommendations by tagging their friends as experts.
Browse: Discover new places. Pan and zoom across the map to see where your friends have been and what interesting things they’ve shared.
Currently, the app works on all iOS devices globally. Spotsetter plans to begin development for Android and other platforms later this year.
The Spotsetter app is available now in the iTunes App Store. Click here to download.
About Spotsetter
Spotsetter is a search engine tackling a big data problem in the maps space. “Where to go” is socially relevant and we answer that through the vast amount of content your friends have shared across social networks. For more information, visit http://spotsetter.com, or follow Spotsetter on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
