Thursday 19 July 2012

Chinese food recommendation app Shakey Shakey Food God has attracted 7m users in 8 months

"China continues to get a lot of flack, often fairly, for producing mere copycat apps and services. But Shakey Shakey Food God, a restaurants recommendation app, is straight-up innovation. And as far as playfully named, unique-to-China apps go, it’s hard to beat.
In just eight months since launch, the app has accrued 7 million registered users and captured nearly 7 percent of the restaurant-recommendations market-share, second only to the Yelp-liked Dianping, which after nine years in existence has close to 50 percent of the market.
The giant seems to have noticed. When I visited the Shakey Shakey office on Monday, CEO and co-founder Chaoren Chen claimed that, three months ago, Dianping tried to acquire the company for tens of millions of dollars. Chen’s company, Lehe Interactive, turned down the offer because of the app’s huge growth potential, and because they believe Dianping just wanted to kill its competition.
[...]
And then there’s the genius of the app. What does it do?
At its most basic, Shakey Shakey Food God suggests restaurants users might like to eat at, depending on their preferences, their location, and the time of day. But the user doesn’t have to tell the app any of that information. It learns it by recording and studying every user action. And the killer move? The user only has to shake the app to receive a new recommendation."

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