With a helping of Instagram-inspired features, a dash of Yelp, and a pinch of Tinder, Yummi’s developers say it integrates the best features from different social networks. The app allows users to share and organize their meals, whether it’s home-cooked or professionally prepared. Posts are organized by chronological order (a time-stamp of when it was shot determines the order, not the posting date/time) and each one can be categorized by cuisine to easily find later on. A calendar view will also show users an overview of their food diary.
Along with the social aspect, Yummi serves as a sort of Yelp for food, with the option to geo-tag and sort by the dishes closest to you, find new restaurants, or even identify new menu items from local favorites (data is sourced from Google). Posts can be saved for later, while a search tool allows for finding food by location, cuisine, or hashtags. A quick swipe right will also bring up nearby posts.
Yummi’s developers said that, along with sharing restaurant cuisine, the app is also designed to share recipes. And unlike Instagram, a popular social network for food photography, posts aren’t uploaded and then lost or forgotten. Because there’s a food journal that chronologically tracks the places you’ve visited or foods you’ve eaten, it serves as a memory bank as well as an easy way for you and others to search.
“I love using the Yummi app as a food journal to keep track of places I have eaten,” said Kristie Hang, a food blogger and TV host. “The app design is so easy to use. All the features are extremely helpful for anyone who loves to eat. It’s about time someone developed an app like this that extracts more value out of a picture than just giving it a Like.”
Yummi isn’t the first social network to center around food. A few years ago, Foodspotting showed a good deal of promise (it’s even the basis of an Amy Schumer joke). But since its acquisition by OpenTable, Foodspotting hasn’t evolved (its last update on the App Store was February 21, 2014). Yummi seems to have taken the baton and continuing where Foodspotting left off, and while both have a similar Instagram-like feel, Yummi is a bit more dynamic in what you can do. For example, you can post different food photos in one post (e.g., multiple dishes from one restaurant). If you’re proficient with any other social networking app, the user interface for Yummi should be familiar.
The one thing Foodspotting does, that Yummi doesn’t, is produce food suggestions when you type into the description box. That will come in time when more users join Yummi and the information gets crowdsourced. We also wish there was the ability to do some form of photo editing before posting, as cropping an image or enhancing the coloring can oftentimes produce a nicer shot. Right now, you have to edit the photo outside the app beforehand. Foodspotting doesn’t have editing tools either, but it does let you perform simple cropping. It’s still early days for Yummi, so we hope more features get added.
The free app, created by former Google executive Pete Wong is currently available for iOS in the App Store.
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