IAC Acquires Restaurant Recommendation Guide Urbanspoon

April 30, 2009 by admin
Filed under Search Engines

IAC, parent company of Ask.com, has acquired Urbanspoon. The restaurant recommendation is a website as well as one of the more popular iPhone apps. Urbanspoon will remain an independent brand, but its content will be integrated with other IAC properties such as Citysearch and InsiderPages.

“With a dedicated and comprehensive focus on restaurants, Urbanspoon is a pioneer in the online and mobile space with a truly unique, innovative and consumer-friendly product,” said Jay Herratti, CEO of Citysearch. “Aggregating content from across the web and blending it with distinctive features including a polling system to rank restaurants, Urbanspoon is expanding the realm of what’s possible for consumers when it comes to finding local content on the web.”

You may remember Urbanspoon from some of the earlier iPhone commercials demonstrating apps once the App Store was open. It looks like a slot machine, except you get to choose which items you want (though you can shake for a random recommendation.)

“With millions of downloads of their iPhone app, Urbanspoon has demonstrated that they can successfully distill mash-up web content and deliver it through mobile for foodies and local restaurant seekers alike,” said Dinesh Moorjani, SVP of Mobile for IAC.