CircleMe, the startup of Italian origin (now based in London) who has been conquering increasing and well-deserved place in the landscape of social networks, yesterday launched a service-enhancing to its iOS app called Plant Guides, that will enrich the “planting” functionality with viral collections of “plants” organized and easily accessible by users. The launch comes with the presentation of three guides, the main one being “Restaurants in Italy” produced by Cibando, another Italian startup which last year achieved considerable popularity with its restaurants finder app that delivers media content produced by Cibando team for premium restaurants.
CircleMe is opening a door to the collaboration with external partners, that is quite interesting: Plant Guides are ultimately a new platform to distribute contents and reach users. A new revenue channel?
Press release
CircleMe adds ‘Plant Guides’ to its service
Popular restaurant finder app Cibando is the first company to leverage this plant collection partnership opportunity
LONDON, UK – CircleMe, the social network that connects you to the things you love and to people around the world who share your interests, is adding service-enhancing ‘Plant Guides’, curated collections of plants. Cibando, a leading restaurant finder app and highly regarded media content producer, is the first company to leverage this partnership opportunity.
Ever since launching publicly in March 2012, CircleMe has experienced very healthy growth, with its iPhone app enjoying the greatest success and acclaim. Planting, CircleMe’s geo-tagging feature that allows users to leave likes in specific locations and to discover new ones as they walk around town, has been crucial to this.
Due to the ever-growing role of Planting, CircleMe has now enhanced this feature by opening the door to partners to provide plants with the addition of ‘Plant Guides’ available exclusively through the CircleMe iPhone app.
‘Plant Guides’ are collections of plants, grouped by either theme or topic. This will allow users to browse things related to the things they are passionate about. The first three collections are Restaurants in Italy, Boutique shops and Art Masterpieces. Other collections will follow in the forthcoming weeks.
Potential partners are already seeing the potential in ‘Plant Guides’, which seek to offer CircleMe users interesting and organized content, whilst giving partners the opportunity to leverage the fast-growing user base to distribute their content.
Cibando, the restaurant finder app that reached the 450,000 downloads milestone to date and counts over 400,000 fans on Facebook, has been the first company to realize the potential of these partnerships. Cibando will provide the featured Restaurants in Italy ‘Plant Guide’ on CircleMe.
“We are very excited to start offering ‘Plant Guides’ to Circlers, delivering on the promise to geo-localize all sorts of different content for our users, depending on their passions in life,” says Giuseppe D’Antonio, CEO of CircleMe “Cibando has been the perfect partner, realizing this potential immediately and quickly jumping on board with a nicely curated collection of top rated restaurants; we think many other partners will be interested in providing their content through our platform, increasing their visibility with users that engage with relevant content while in mobility.”
“Guk Kim, CEO of Cibando says “Cibando makes finding restaurants tastier. Our premium restaurant content provides users with an unforgettable and unique dining experience. It was only natural for us to embrace CircleMe’s philosophy and partner to provide our users with more variegated and facilitated choices.”
About CircleMe
CircleMe (from the company Cascaad) is pioneering a new generation of social networking based on all the things you like, rather than simply who you know. Alongside world-class user interface design, the service is powered by cutting-edge semantic and social recommendation technology that provides a leap forward in our ability to discover new information and people of personal interest. The company, VC backed for €2.5M and with offices in London (UK) and Milan (Italy), is 10-people strong, with broad and relevant experience in companies and institutions as diverse as Google, Yahoo!, TripAdvisor, Sony, Babelgum, Dada, XeroxPARC, Stanford & Purdue University.
About Cibando
Founded by Guk Kim, Cibando operates a popular iOS and Android application that makes it easy to find restaurants in Italy. Users simply draw a circle on a map to select how far they’re willing to search, and select their preferred restaurant category, cuisine type and price range. Cibando then lists the best restaurants that match the user’s requests, providing an overview that includes mouthwatering photos, news, tips and loads of other helpful information that allow users to connect directly to the restaurant’s website, call to make a reservation, check out the restaurant’s menu in advance, and build a list of personal favorites.
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