Apple Inc. (AAPL) purchases recommendation mapping service Spotsetter

Vastly overshadowed by Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) $3 billion acquisition of Jim Iovine’s and Andre “Dr. Dre” Young’s Beats, another purchase was made with far less fanfare but perhaps a notable future impact on Apple’s developing business lines. Though the exact terms of the purchase are undisclosed and Apple has declined to comment on the acquisition, the purchase follows closely on the Cupertino company’s announced focus on Indoor Mapping as its next area of robust map program development.

Spotsetter is a young company which was founded just three years ago in 2011. Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the firm is the brainchild of Stephen Tse and Johnny Lee. The company started out with $1.3 million in funding. Its existence as a separate entity came to an upbrupt end on D-Day 2014, when Apple bought it out for an undisclosed amount and immediately removed the Spotsetter app from the App Store.

Spotsetter’s service is a unique approach to online recommendations, adapting them dynamically to individual users. Mapping was based on a “personal index,” collecting data from a wide spectrum of sources including Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Zagat, Yelp, and more, and then displaying results based on the particular user’s tastes and whose recommendations they find most useful. Thus, different recommendations would be mapped for each specific user.

Though such a service would presumably mesh well with an “indoor mapping” drive on Apple’s (AAPL) part, the exact reason for the acquisition has not been announced. For the Cupertino firm, it is the latest in a series of mapping and location-based acquisitions that have sprung up thick as mushrooms after rain during the past year. Spotsetter’s blog simply notes that their app is shutting down and they still have “big dreams” for personalized recommendation mapping in the future.

Prior to the purchase, Spotsetter added layers of new sophistication to their mapping service. One example of these is time weighting – assigning greater mapping priority to locations that individual users spend considerable time visiting as compared to those they visit only briefly. For example, a user who spends hours perusing the shelves in hobby stores but only enters a convenience store for a few seconds to pay for gas will see more hobby stores than gas stations appearing on their maps.

Spotsetter was already optimized for the iPhone, minimizing the amount of work demanded from Apple’s (AAPL) designers to bring it in sync with the Apple ecosystem. The company was also enthusiastic about embracing wearable technology, which would fit neatly with the much-anticipated rollout of the iWatch, if that piece of hardware ever materializes. Stephen Tse and Johnny Lee, Spotsetter’s founders, are now working as software engineers at Apple.