As you can see from their site's opening graphic, Spotsetter shut down about a week ago as they were acquired by Apple.

Spotsetter is a social search engine using big data to offer personalized recommendations as to places to go. Apparently the deal was focused on acquiring the technology and the talent of the two founders which are both ex-Google Maps engineers.

Linkedin already has one of the co-founder Stephen Tse listed as Software Engineer at Apple. Tse was a senior software engineer at Google before starting Spotsetter. The other Spotsetter co-founder Jonny Lee is also listed as already working in Apple's engineering department.

Spotsetter used a patent-pending algorithm to pull in users' content from social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Foursquare, as well as venue content from over 30 review sites and lists from trusted sources like Yelp, Zagat, the New York Times, Michelin, and TripAdviser. As of last summer, the company said that it had processed 5 million user profiles, 40 million venues, and 1 million curated venue content items from around the world.





Before the Spotsetter site shuts down you should check out some of what they do in the social sphere, as some of this will eventually be worked into Apple's future maps app.

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