Just a little more than a week after acquiring Beats, Apple has now reportedly acquired Spotsetter. According to a report out of TechCrunch, Apple quietly snatched up the company mainly for the technology and two founders behind the service. Spotsetter was founded in 2012 by ex-Google Maps engineer Stephen Tse and Jonny Lee. Both Lee and Tse’s LinkedIn profiles now say they’re employed by Apple, as well.
Spotsetter was a social-based search engine that offered personalized recommendations on places to go. The service worked by layering social data on top of a maps interface. It used an algorithm to aggregate information from users’ social networks, including Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and Instagram. The service then paired the information from social networks with information from services such as Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Zagat to provide recommendations on where to go.
As of last year, Spotsetter says that it had 5 million user profiles and 40 million venues. Apple could obviously use this talent and technology to integrate similar features into its Maps services. Back in December, Apple acquired Topsy Labs Inc., a similar service that aggregated data from social networks like Twitter and Google+.
Spotsetter was available on iOS and Android until just recently. Lee posted an announcement on the company’s website last week signaling the end of Spotsetter. The company had raised $1.3 million in seed funding before its launch just 10 months ago.
