Though not known for its affinity with dining and delicacies, Snapchat has a new partnership with restaurant review website The Infatuation to enable users to find local eats on the Snap Map. Announced recently, Snap will be adding a new map layer from The Infatuation to give users access to restaurant recommendations for places near them and within the locale.
On Bites and GPS
Note that the new map layer is only available in select US states for the time being – for now, only users in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Austin, Seattle, Philadelphia, Miami, Atlanta, Denver, D.C, and London have access to the layer, which will appear on the upper-right corner of the map. Select ‘The Infatuation’ to start finding nearby restaurants. Once you find a restaurant that you like, you can share it with friends via chat or add it to your favorites to save it for later.
As part of this new partnership, users will now also automatically see The Infatuation reviews in Place Profiles in more than 50 cities around the world. Snap says that more than 250 million users turn to the Snap Map each month to see what their friends are up to. The platform launched layered maps last year to create new ways for users to find things to do with friends. Snap’s layered feature lets users add data from some of Snap’s chosen developer partners directly to their map, allowing them to view the world from a particular perspective.
Earlier this year, Snap also partnered with Ticketmaster to launch a new way for users to discover live events within the Snap Map. Now, the app displays suggested upcoming shows based on user-defined preferences that you can either swipe left or right as you browse. The company sees this as a sort of redefined dating app that pairs users with interesting live events, as opposed to partners. Again, users are now able to browse through upcoming events at nearby venues through a new Snap Map layer.
Snap’s Ticketmaster partnership is the first time it has ever integrated a partner to Snap Map through its ‘Layers’ feature. This more recent partnership with The Infatuation effectively marks the second time for such an occurrence, making it quite possible that future partnerships of similar nature are likely to happen.
The Wrap
We see Snap slowly opening up its unique map feature to partners, which goes a long way in exemplifying the current focus on platform partnerships. From a normal standpoint, it’s as simple as adding a new sorting filter for searches and queries, but through the lens of a creator or advertiser, it’s a significant opportunity and one that’ll likely drive behaviors highly associated with physical places and events. Such connections will prove vital during the next stage of connection, where the bridge between reality and digital experiences narrows even more.
Likewise, it’s overall good news for travel fans and foodies as they now get the best of both worlds through a single function. You may think that food and Snapchat aren’t related at all, but when we start considering the role of food in relation to the online space and services, then links do start forming. Gather enough linkage and you’ll eventually be able to identify and build a niche.
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