Apple Acquires Social Search Engine Spotsetter

redletterdave (2493036) writes 'Apple has purchased Spotsetter, a social search engine that uses big data to offer personalized recommendations for places to go. Spotsetter was designed to combine recommendations from friends with trusted reviews and other data to create more social maps. It would show you which friends were 'experts' in a given area, and you could tag your friends as experts (like LinkedIn) to boost the influence of their recommendations. You could also discover new places by browsing Spotsetter's maps to see where your friends have been and what they've recommended. Spotsetter's app, which was available on iOS and Android, officially closed down just six days ago.'

Comments

Sell! Sell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like, without Steve and the helm, Apple is just going to randomly spend all of their money on worthless acquisitions. I wouldn't be surprised if they buy AOL next.

Re:Sell! Sell!

[mfh]

They might buy them to ensure they have enough plastic for more purchases.

Re:Sell! Sell!

[FatdogHaiku]

BRILLIANT! You know that warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc? Most of those boxes are full of AOL CD's! It's a polycarbonate gold mine! Think of it, first give them a sleek paint job, then re-brand them as iCoasters! They come complete with an ergonomic hole in the center to aid in picking them up! They can be spindled for easy storage. Think about it, when was the last time you had a product you could "SPINDLE"? (Folding and mutilating still not recommended...)

Re:Sell! Sell!

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like, without Steve and the helm, Apple is just going to randomly spend all of their money on worthless acquisitions.

Not randomly. Like Microsoft did in the past, they've fixated on killing a competitor rather than improving their products. And in doing it they're fulfilling Steve's dying wishes.

I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.

Steve Jobs, early 2010.

They're trying to kill Google. It's what Steve would have wanted.

Re:Sell! Sell!

[ArcadeMan]

Apple needs to buy SpaceX, so they can nuke the entire Googleplex site from orbit - it’s the only way to be sure.

Re:Sell! Sell!

[peragrin]

Hey it would lower property prices in silicon valley. So it wouldn't be all bad.

A nuke wouldn't be needed. Apple just needs to drop a couple of tungstan chairs.

That way they could destroy Google and one up Ballmer in one shot. With the money left over Apple could buy the Cubs for 10 billion.

Re:Sell! Sell!

[Plumpaquatsch]

Looks like, without Steve and the helm, Apple is just going to randomly spend all of their money on worthless acquisitions.

Not randomly. Like Microsoft did in the past, they've fixated on killing a competitor rather than improving their products.

Yeah, just like they shut down that other outfit Siri. Nobody ever heard of that again. [/sarcasm]

social search and data mining

[TheGratefulNet]

if there's one thing we need more of, its this.

I mean, how can I find out about my friends unless they report up to some big corp?

oh right. I could just call them or email them directly. and that does not involve ANY spying at all.

yet another useless 'company' and 'product'. sigh.

I guess, like the movie industry, the software world has just run out of truly new ideas and just keeps rehashing the same old shit.

Re:social search and data mining

[Anonymous Coward]

the software world has just run out of truly new ideas and just keeps rehashing the same old shit.

About like your post?
People learn and adapt their behavior by observing other people. They always have. This has both good and bad aspects, but that's what sets behavior, trends, fashion, and thinking in general. It's why celebrity endorsements work.That's just the way it is.
Many people want to stay reasonably close to the norm, while others' first thought is to dismiss the norm. But whatever side of that line you're on, you're still influenced by it and need to know what it is.
It has tremendous influence. It's part what makes your and my and everybody else's first reactions to something be less than rational. Often they stay founded in irrationality, but we subsequently find reasons to justify them. It's much more rare to reject our first reaction by rational thought.
And all of it starts by knowing what other people think.

Re:social search and data mining

[Anonymous Coward]

What if we just make a law that enables me as a person to charge whatever I want from any company who stores any information about me? Like a license. Wouldn't that be great? And yes, of course, any company that stores any data about me is required to provide me with with a printout of said data yearly, at their cost, without me notifying them. I think that would be pretty neat.

Re:social search and data mining

[vux984]

I mean, how can I find out about my friends unless they report up to some big corp?

For me, the real question is

"Why would I have people using this service as friends?"

Besides, outside of very limited domains I wouldn't value my friends reviews of products on amazon for example. And it would be far more trouble for me to tag them as friends, and then tag them as 'experts' in something, and then hope that they reviewed precisely what i was interested in... ? And that's assuming I'd be bothered to sign up for an account in the first place, which is unlikely in the extreme.

No, like you, I would just call them.

Re:social search and data mining

[TheP4st]

oh right. I could just call them or email them directly.

There are honestly times when I wonder if the average teen even know that you can make calls with a smartphone. And email?! That's just soooo 2012!

Re:social search and data mining

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's a good idea. Doesn't have nothing to do with what I wrote, but yes. Something similar to seeing your own credit report would be good.

Re:social search and data mining

[Plumpaquatsch]

I mean, how can I find out about my friends unless they report up to some big corp?

For me, the real question is

"Why would I have people using this service as friends?"

You obviously didn't understand TFS. Your friends don't need to "use" this service for it to get information from them. The service digs through publicly available information on the internet, info that people give up voluntarily as if somebody gave a shit. You can boost the ranking of information coming from certain people, be they your friend or foes or Kim Kardashian or Eric S. Raymond.

There's no magic about it, it's just a meta-crawler.

Re:social search and data mining

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] And email?! That's just soooo 2012!

More like 2004. if you're in Korea.

Damnit

[Anonymous Coward]

If I read about one more "social network" bullshit, I'm going to puke.

When will the sheeps wake up?

Never heard of it

[rebelwarlock]

Is this "Spotsetter" something I'm supposed to have heard of? I feel like I got dumped into a story halfway with a bunch of characters I have no reason to care about.

Re:Never heard of it

[rasmusbr]

Is this "Spotsetter" something I'm supposed to have heard of? I feel like I got dumped into a story halfway with a bunch of characters I have no reason to care about.

Nope, thy had an app that peaked at number 50 or so in their category ranking on iTunes.

Their blog talks about them working on wearable software, so I suppose Apple was behind on some software feature for their iWatch (probably a feature that lets you know when you are near good restaurants, cafes, shops, etc) and decided to source it from the outside.

Who?

[msobkow]

How much did they waste on a "service" I've never heard of before and would have no interest in using?

As someone else commented, if I want to know what my friends are doing, I call or email them, not check some random corporate spy network.

Note to Curmudgeonly Posters

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't know what this service is (or was) and have no idea why Apple would buy it, then in all likelihood, you're not the people they're targeting in their marketing, nor likely to be the people targeted in their marketing.

In point of fact, Apple is probably not concerned with you at all vis-a-vis Spotsetter or whatever they choose to rename it to.

Just FYI.

Back to your bitching just because ...

Re:Note to Curmudgeonly Posters

[msobkow]

Ever hear of the tech bubble of the 90s?

The way I see it, this mania for "social" sites is another tech bubble.

Bitching about it should remind everyone with a functioning brain cell of that last debacle.

But then there are people like you, who think that this crap is "special".