Burpple today announced that it has released a public beta version of its Android app. The app that asks you to share your dining experiences through photographs has been available on iOS exclusively since its launch in early 2012 but it is now ready to welcome Android users into the network. In its most recent major updates for the iOS app, it added food and restaurant recommendations as well as exploration through nearby popular spots, and earlier this month, offline posting.
While many people share photos of food through many other social networks, Burpple’s specific subject matter allows it to become a recommendation app for others to discover and try great food (or avoid bad ones). Taking photos of food has become sort of a pastime for many and the largest app in this field, Foodspotting, was recently acquired by OpenTable for a tidy sum of $10 million.
Back in November Burpple released an infographic revealing that it had been used to share more than 150,000 food moments in over 3300 cities in 115 countries. Today’s announcement marks a massive jump in usage as it recorded more than 300,000 food moments, roughy double the usage in two months. It also saw expanded use across 4000 cities in 140 countries.
In the announcement, co-founder Dixon Chan said, “We’ve been working tirelessly to make this new Android app to share and discover all your food moments in one place. Today, we release Burpple for Android as a public beta for everyone to test and enjoy.”
When Burpple launched for iOS, it seems like a rather strange decision since the company is based in Singapore and Android is a far more popular platform across Asia. On second look though, clearly it allowed them to tackle the North American market which as of last November made up more than 20% of its user base and it also gained 12% from Australia.
The Android version is expected to boost adoption across Android-mad Asia especially since the app’s minimum OS requirement is Android 2.2 at a time when nearly half of Android devices on the planet run on 2.3. Froyo (2.2) and Gingerbread (2.3) combined make up nearly 60% of active Android devices as of early January of this year.
The Android version was designed to look identical to the iOS version and work the same way, incorporating the same features that iOS users have been enjoying in the latest version. Burpple is available for free from Google Play and on the App Store.
