It looks like that $3 billion Beats purchase just wasn’t quite enough to scratch Apple’s acquisition itch.
A new report from TechCrunch claims that Apple has acquired Spotsetter, a search engine that gathers social data and lays it upon a map interface to offer personalized recommendations of places to visit. The app combines information from friends recommendations, reviews and social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Spotsetter was available as an app on Android and iOS, but it appears that they’ve both been pulled.
While no concrete information about the deal has been given, Spotsetter co-founder Johnny Lee penned a blog post last week that said that the service was shutting down. Additionally, both Lee and co-founder Stephen Tse’s LinkedIn profiles now say that they’re engineers at Apple. There’s no word on how much Apple paid for Spotsetter, but the deal reportedly closed last week after other firms became interested in Spotsetter.
Apple has never been big on confirming its acquisitions or saying what it has planned for the companies that it buys, so it’s unlikely that Apple will tell us what it intends to do with Spotsetters technology. Considering what it did, though, it’s possible that Apple could use the data to beef up its own Maps app. The app has received quite a bit of criticism since its debut in 2012, but recent rumors have suggested that Apple is hoping to improve Maps with the update to iOS 8.
Via TechCrunch