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.