The Urbanspoon iPhone app has evolved from a simple tool for finding a restaurant nearby to a full-fledged service that caters to your entire dining experience. Users can explore nearby restaurants, use the classic shaker to help narrow it down, connect with friends and more. It should come as no surprise then that Urbanspoon has seen tremendous growth over the past few years. It released data showing just how much: 80 percent traffic growth in 2011 with the mobile app growing faster than the Urbanspoon website.
The mobile app grew 112 percent from 2010, while the website grew 70 percent — a lesser amount, but still substantial. Urbanspoon.com gets roughly 28 million visits per month. Urbanspoon, both mobile web and native apps, collectively get 10 million monthly visits. The growth is most likely due to influx of new features such as reservation management and Dineline, a way to keep track of visited restaurants and publish them to Facebook Timeline.
Urbanspoon may face troubled waters ahead though. Just like Urbanspoon, Foursquare is evolving too. Once a check-in service, the new Explore feature for finding nearby venues on the website and mobile apps signal that Foursquare wants to expand its capabilities to compete with other location apps. I’m sure Urbanspoon will still thrive but Foursquare has the power and resources to lure some of its foodies away.