Zillow Co-Founder Spencer Rascoff & Daughter Launch Food-Centered Social Media App, Recon Food
A new vertical social media app that will bring people together through a shared love of food.
LOS ANGELES, June 29, 2021 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Recon Food, a vertical social media app that will bring people together through a shared love of food, launched out of beta today. The app, which is co-founded by Spencer Rascoff, co-founder of Zillow and Hotwire, and his 16-year-old daughter, Sophia Rascoff, was developed in response to the need for a healthy space to connect with others away from the noise, toxicity and politics that often bombard mainstream social media apps.
Recon Food is social media, but specific to food. Users can either take photos of their restaurant dishes and review them, or take photos of the dishes they make in their own kitchen for others to see. Users are able to take photos on-demand or let the innovative technology search their camera roll and upload any food-centric photos ever taken. The app then uses geolocation to identify the restaurants where you took the photos and allows you to recommend the dishes. Recon Food users can decide if they want to share their photos and reviews with their connections or with the larger community.
The app was dreamt up by Sophia Rascoff with the support of her father and co-founder, Spencer Rascoff. In an effort to connect with her friends during the pandemic, Sophia found herself on social media more often. However, the main social media apps were too noisy and filled with toxicity when all she wanted was a mental escape and connections. Sophia needed a place to reconnect with friends in a positive environment free of politics and off-target advertising. Between her personal love of food and her desire to connect with others, Recon Food was born.
"Social media today, at its worst, can be a place full of negativity that divides us. At its best, it brings us together by allowing people to share common interests. But we all need an occasional escape to just reconnect with friends in a positive environment," said Recon Food co-founder and CEO Sophia Rascoff. "During the pandemic, my entire family made a point of trying new foods and recipes together which really brought us together. That is what sparked the idea for Recon Food. An app that allows friends to connect over something easy to love: food. Quite simply, it's food without the fight."
Recon Food Features and Details
- All users have two tracks on their profile, their Kitchen and their restaurant reviews. The Kitchen is the place for the food they make, while the reviews section is for photos of food they ate from a restaurant.
- Using innovative computer vision technology, Recon Food will search a user's camera roll for all food-centric photos taken in the past and automatically upload them to the app. As the user takes a walk down memory lane while browsing their photos, they can pick and choose which photos they'd like to show on their private account to their connections, or to the public. Any restaurant photos can be rated and reviewed and geotagged to the restaurant location. A user's in-kitchen photos are not geotagged.
- Users can connect Recon Food with the contacts on their phone to invite friends directly into the app. If they have any contacts that are already on the app, it will notify them. If friends that are already on the app have a public account, they can follow them immediately; if they have a private profile a user will need to request to follow them. All profiles, public or private, can be found using their profile name or by looking through other friends' lists.
"The problems Sophia faced when using some of the largest social media apps are not unique. Social media is no longer one-size-fits all and while the broadest social media apps still have appeal, there are millions of people who are craving communities where they can dive deep into what they are passionate about," said Recon Food co-founder, Spencer Rascoff. "Recon Food does just that. It gives foodies, hobby chefs and even professional chefs a way to share their passion with communities that truly care. Constantly posting photos of home-baked chocolate chip cookies is probably too much for some social media communities but on Recon Food, it fits right in. Vertical-focused social networks are the next frontier for social media -- Strava or Peloton for exercise, All Trails for hiking, LinkedIn for careers, and now Recon Food for food."
Recon Food also introduces you to new foods or restaurants which will undoubtedly provide support to restaurants who have struggled amid the pandemic. Users on a reconnaissance mission for a great place to eat can use the map to find restaurants their connections have recommended, as well as public photos and reviews from foodies and influencers. Details on a restaurant's location, hours of operation, phone number and website are all available on the restaurant's profile page.
Recon Food can be downloaded for free in the App Store and is available on desktop at https://getrecon.app/.
Media Contact
Anna Saufferer, Kingston Marketing Group, +1 (425) 354-8452, [email protected]
SOURCE Recon Food
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