Spottd iPhone app review

There is no shortage of location-based social apps. Foursquare and Gowalla were the flagship apps and big names such as Facebook have joined in but there are plenty of those too.
One of those, Spottd, comes from London-based Floxx. The idea is that you use the app to tell people about interesting places or just to remember a place for later. It could be a restaurant or a museum or even just a funny billboard or a piece of street art.

Adding a location is very simple: pinpoint it on the map, type a brief description of what it is and why it is interesting and add a photo if you like. Once it's uploaded, all your friends can see it and you can see what they have been sharing. If you want to mark a location purely for your own reference then you can make it private.

There's a 'gamification' element too, as is almost obligatory on apps of this kind. You get points for adding a certain number of locations, updating your profile picture and so on.

It works well but it's largely unremarkable in what is a crowded space. However, there is one very clever touch that makes Spottd worthy of note.
The developers have added Charles Dickens as a user, just in time for the author's bicentenary. If you 'follow' Dickens, you can visit significant places from his life as well as locations from his books. It's a clever idea and makes the app ideal companion for a London walking tour.
It also opens the possibility of doing similar things with other famous people. It wouldn't need the developers to do it either - anyone could join up and create something like this. In a way, that excites me more than finding out which cafes my friends hang out in.

Spottd doesn't get much wrong but the key to success for location-based apps like this one is whether you can build a network. You might find plenty of good restaurants on Spottd but will you find your friends there?





By Shane Richmond, Head of Technology (Editorial)10:15AM GMT 09 Feb 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-app-reviews/9071253/Spottd-iPhone-app-review.html

Category: Mobile Phones