Fondu Powers Up Restaurant Discovery - Will Make Life Easier at SXSW

March 7, 2012 in Travel

[prMac.com] New York, New York - Last week, Fondu quietly released a major update to their "bite-sized" restaurant review app. Aside from aesthetics, there were four significant changes: 1) discovery, 2) bookmarks, 3) photos, 4) personal recommendations. With these, Fondu takes one giant leap forward in becoming the social review platform.

In the new version, what was previously the "Popular" tab on Fondu has been completely redesigned. One can now search for anything (e.g. "sushi", "brunch", or "tea") and see relevant nearby reviews - as always, prioritized by one's friends. With nearly 20,000 reviews across the world, especially in New York, San Francisco, and Seattle, these improved search capabilities make Fondu quite useful, even for people who aren't interested in sharing their own opinions.

Bookmarks - which used to be a secondary feature of the app - are now highlighted everywhere. Every review has a button to save that place to one's bookmark list. That bookmark list is now easily accessible and viewable on a map. It's simple, but powerful; a user can bookmark whenever they want to remember a restaurant and then any time they are looking for a place to go, they can see their nearby bookmarks.

Photos and recommending places to one's friends had been highly requested since the launch of the app last November. Photos are quick to add and help to include more context in the "bite-sized" reviews - whether it's pictures of the food, ambiance, or the people. It's that same personal aspect that led to the addition of direct recommendations to friends and family. That's simply how a lot of people share restaurant and bar choices. After going to a place that someone would love, a user can tell them about it by adding them in the "Recommend to friends" section. This works even if they don't use the app; recommendations can also be sent via email, Facebook, and Twitter.

Fondu isn't just making its users happy though - the team has also begun partnering with restaurants like GustOrganics in NYC that want to be on the cutting edge of food & tech. If you are attending SXSW, be on the lookout for the places that Fondu is featuring as "Top-Rated": among them are festival favorites Tamale House & Sam's Bar-B-Cue. Open up the app while you are in Austin to find out the rest of the list and keep your eyes open for the Fondu posters & stickers around town.

Supported Languages:
* US English, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Romanian, Russian and Spanish

Device Requirements:
* iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad
* Requires iOS 4.2 or later
* 7.8 MB

Pricing and Availability:
Fondu 1.10 is Free and available worldwide exclusively through the App Store in the Travel category.

Fondu is a social network for bite-sized reviews. We want to help you share your taste with the world and hear from the people who actually matter to you. Our small, scrappy startup has been working in this industry for two years. We've had offices all over Manhattan, but we are currently set up in Midtown. This summer, we closed a seed round of $575k. This November, we launched our iPhone app internationally. Copyright (C) 2012 Fondu. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries.

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Orion Burt
Co-founder, VP of Marketing
206-730-5612

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