Foodspotting's team. (Photo: foodspotting.com)

Another sexy startup has made it across the finish line, following in the fleet footsteps of Instagram. AllThingsD reports that the reservations platform OpenTable has shelled out $10 million to purchase Foodspotting. It ain't a billion dollars, but it's not too shabby given that the photo-based recommendations startup had raised $3.75 million in its three years of life. 

"When we started Foodspotting, we didn't set out to build a billion dollar business, we just wanted to bring a great product into the world and watch it grow," CEO Alexia Andrzejewski told Betabeat via email. "Unlike all the acquihire opportunities out there, this was an opportunity to actually achieve what we set out to do: Continue to support our product and community while integrating smart recommendations and beautiful design throughout the OpenTable experience."

"This had a lot of intangible value to us," she added.

The move is part of efforts by OpenTable (founded in 1998 and publicly traded) to get a better handle on mobile. The relationship between the two companies got its start a year ago, says AllThingsD, when the two companies partnered to add photos to OpenTable's mobile offering.

“We had a such a shared passion for restaurants, we wanted an opportunity to work closely together as one team,” CEO Matt Roberts told AllThingsD. Not to mention it's probably far safer for a Web 1.0 company simply to acquire a mobile product, team and community of three million users, lock stock and barrel.

As for Foodspotting, helping OpenTable create a better experience for its users sounds a whole lot hell of a lot easier than figuring out how, exactly, to drive users to local businesses. Then, of course, there was the loss of two popular faces of the brand: Soraya Darabi and Amy Cao.

While Foodspotting was growing steadily, Ms. Andrzejewski said, "We realized we could propel all of this forward even faster by joining forces with OpenTable." On the subject of whether her company's acquisition might portend a shakeout in the space, she added that, "other food startups and location startups may find value in joining forces with companies with networks like OpenTable has been able to build."

The current plan is to keep Foodspotting up and running as its own product, though “the more deeper integration will happen in the other direction," whatever that means. (We suspect it means don't cry two years from now when they do shut it down.) Ms. Andrzejewski explained in a blog post that users "can also look forward to smarter recommendations, better restaurant information and a more visual, social and design-driven dining experience as we bring the best of Foodspotting to OpenTable."

The Foodspotting team will also be moving over to OpenTable, with Ms. Andrzejewski accepting a gig as lead UI designer.

Ms. Darabi, her retroactively added cofounder, offered props--via Twitter, naturally: "So proud of the full @foodspotting team, especially co-founders @teddyg and @ladylexy. Open Table, I hope you know how lucky you are."

This post has been updated throughout with comments from Ms. Andrzejewski. 

Ms. Cao (Photo: Stupidly Simple Snacks)

Less than a year after Foodspotting cofounder Soraya Darabi stepped down from her day-to-day role, the company has lost another prominent representative of the brand. Last month, Amy Cao, head of community and social media at the food guide, opted out of the startup for the freelance life.

Ms. Cao, the consumate foodie behind sites like Amy Blogs Chow and Stupidly Simple Snacks, was very much a public face for the startup--so much so that the tipster who told us she left mistook Ms. Cao for one of the startup's cofounders. Ms. Cao did not respond to a request for comment from Betabeat. But according to her LinkedIn profile, she is now freelance social media and community director for startups like Levo League and Consmr, which demo'd at last night's New York Tech Meetup.

"Amy did an amazing job of getting our community off the ground and decided to go freelance to help other companies in their early stages do the same," Foodspotting CEO and cofounder Alexa Andrzejewski told Betabeat by email. "Soraya and Amy will always be a part of the Foodspotting family and they both continue to represent us (in fact, Soraya recently spoke about Foodspotting at Le Web). But our community isn't about any one person--it's about people all over the world meeting up to celebrate great food and foodspotting--and Amy worked hard to ensure this. She brought on a dozen official ambassadors and helped many unofficial ones organize Foodspotting events all over the country. Because of this, our community has continued to thrive," Ms. Andrzejewski added pointing to a sample of this year's "Eatups."

Foodspotting, which has raised a total of $3.75 million, has tried to distinguish itself in by focusing on specific menu items and recommendations. "Find and recommend dishes, not just restaurants," is the site's tagline. But in addition to other food-sharing apps like Forkly, Foodspotting has also had to find a way to attract users who'd be more inclined to just snap a pic of that BBQ brisket or artisanal popsicle on Instagram, Foursquare, or even Yelp.

Nonetheless, the startup has shown strong growth, Ms. Andrzejewski told Betabeat. Last month, Foodspotting crossed the 3 million download mark. That's up from two million users in February of this year, when the company launched Foodspotting 3.  "But our greatest growth since the redesign has been around engagement. Engagement is what matters most to us, so we're excited to see all of those numbers on the rise," she added, offering the following stats:

• It took us two years to get to our first 1 million photos (between launching the Foodspotting website in January 2010 and launching Foodspotting 3 in February 2012), but only five months to get to 2 million photos.
• We've almost tripled the percent of active users taking other actions (want, try, love, commenting, etc.).
• The number of sessions per user has risen every week since February as has the median session length, both of which are higher than ever. The total number of sessions per month has doubled since February as well, which has been around 1.5M.
• Over a thousand tweets and over a thousand Facebook actions are shared each day.

As for the competition, Foodspotting has opted to go where the users are. "We just launched Foursquare a week ago and resurfaced our Instagram integration last week, which enables users to post to Foodspotting using Instagram by tagging their photos #foodspotting or #food," said Ms. Andrzejewski.

Foodspotting synchs with other social media platforms as well. "Foodspotters continue to share thousands of photos on Twitter and Facebook each day and our Facebook Timeline integration, which includes activity beyond photos like dishes you Want, Try and Love, has been driving between 15-20M impressions on Facebook each month."

Until last week, only a few users knew about the hidden Instagram feature.  "But seeing how many food photographers were distraught by Instagram's outage last month, reminded us how important this integration could be," she explained. "The more great content we have on Foodspotting, the better we can help people decide what to eat and where--so the more Instagram-powered Foodspotting becomes, the better!"

Foodspotting doesn't use traditional advertising on its website or in its mobile apps, so integrating with other platforms doesn't detract from its ability to monetize, said Ms. Andrzejewski.

"While we make some revenue from sponsored contests, our primary monetization plans aren't about pageviews and taps, they're about how many people we can actually drive to local businesses. We're developing tools that will enable businesses to reach foodspotters and foodseekers regardless of how they're participating in Foodspotting," she added, pointing to Foursquare's Connected Apps platform as a particular great channel to deliver information to Foodspotting users.

foursquare.com

Food porn social network Foodspotting has arguably been threatened by Foursquare ever since the latter added photos to its check-ins. Dennis Crowley and Foodspotting co-founder Alexa Andrzejewski, "The king and queen of location-based services," as nerd blogger Robert Scoble put it, have been on cautiously friendly terms.

But now Foursquare is making a blatant move into Foodspotting territory with a foodie walking tour for media "where we'll discuss how Foursquare can help you share your expertise on local restaurant favorites, cheap eats, happy hour deals, and more," according to a publicity rep.

The tour runs through the Foursquare-dominated East Village and Soho, stopping at restaurants to find deals. The walk starts at Pulino's on Bowery, where diners must try the baked ricotta. As Foursquare ramps up with more features, visibility and now media walking tours, it's conceivable the start-up may leave us with no reason to open Yelp, Foodspotting or Dinevore again.

Soraya Darabi

Ms. Darabi, who has more than 429,000 followers on Twitter and a strong personal brand as a tech-savvy marketer, was brought on to get publicity for Foodspotting. And she did it well, evangelizing the service by word of mouth, on Twitter and through myriad interviews with outlets from Betabeat to Mashable ("How Soraya Darabi Put Foodspotting on the Map") to New York magazine.

But Ms. Darabi had little input on product, sources close to Foodspotting told us, and she seemed less enthusiastic about Foodspotting as time went on and the service had trouble gaining traction in the face of threats from competitors as intimidating as Foursquare.

Now, Ms. Darabi is "taking a step back into the role of Senior Advisor and will continue to vest equity in this role," she told Betabeat via email while on a flight to the West Coast. "This was a mutual decision we came to given the company's shifting priorities (product and local outreach) and my strengths (national media and brand relationships), but we haven't announced it publicly yet because we didn't see an immediate reason to--we're continuing to collaborate as we always have, just in a more focused way."

Ms. Darabi with Foodspotting co-founders Ted Grubb and Alexa Andrzejewski.

Foodspotting co-founder Alexa Andrzejewski affirmed Ms. Darabi's explanation. But at least half a dozen sources close to Foodspotting told Betabeat that founders and investors were frustrated that Ms. Darabi seemed distracted by other pursuits, continuing to serve as the public face for the company even as she was increasingly absent from daily work.

Losing Ms. Darabi is a blow to Foodspotting, most sources told Betabeat, considering her high profile. "Business people who have partnered with them before say that the space is completely inundated and Foodspotting was the one company that really had a brand," one source told Betabeat. "She is a big name," the source continued, speculating that Ms. Darabi could get half a percent in equity just for joining another start-up's advisory board. "She is a promotional all-star."

Ms. Darabi, who started her career as communications coordinator for Conde Nast before taking on social media marketing at the The New York Times, leapt into the start-up world with a six-month stint as Product Lead of Drop.io project PressLift, after which she jumped to Foodspotting. "She has a track record of someone who wants to leave before the show is over," one source close to Drop.io told Betabeat. "She likes to work on the next hot thing. Foodspotting was the best deal early stage start-up you could be at when she started doing PR there. It was always weird to me that she joined as co-founder even though it was already launched."

Most recently, Ms. Darabi has been appearing on-air and working on segments for ABC, where she's been helping out for 10 months started helping out last month. Regarding ABC, she said she's "considering doing more now, but haven't made any commitments as of late beyond chatting with a couple of projects about an advising role."Ms. Darabi also recently became the first digital ambassador to The United Nation's technology group "Global Pulse," an was named a TechStars mentor in New York City as well as a member of the 'Notables' committee at Carnegie Hall.

Correction: This post mis-stated the time Ms. Darabi has been working at ABC. She has been working there for ten months. Betabeat regrets the error.