By Alexei Oreskovic
SAN FRANCISCO, March 6 (Reuters) – Findery, a map-based
social networking service started by the co-founder of popular
photo-sharing site Flickr, launched a mobile app on Thursday.
The free app, which is available for Apple Inc
iPhones, lets users leave notes, photos and videos about
real-world locations on digital maps.
Findery is competing in a crowded field, where many users
have adopted social networking and mobile messaging services
such as Facebook Inc, Snapchat and Instagram to share
their personal musings and to get restaurant and movie
recommendations from friends.
Caterina Fake, Findery’s founder and Chief Executive, is
hoping there’s room for a specialized service that appeals to a
different set of Internet users’ sensibilities.
A lot of apps “are still trying to hook you up with your
friends who are going to recommend a coffee shop to you,” said
Fake. The idea of Findery, which has raised roughly $10 million
in funding, is to give people a “more meaningful” experience by
supplementing online maps with everything from personal
anecdotes about a neighborhood to historical facts about a
particular building.
Fake has a record of creating successful online services
that harness user-generated content. Fake co-founded Flickr, one
of the seminal photo-sharing websites acquired by Yahoo Inc
in 2005. She is also the chairman of Etsy, an online
market that specializes in crafts that some observers believe
could soon be headed towards an initial public stock offering.
While many online companies now espouse a “mobile first”
strategy, Findery launched its service as a website two years
ago. The company released the Web version first in order to
build up the service’s collection of notes, Fake explained. She
said it was easier for users to write lengthy stories on a
computer than on a mobile phone app.
