Updated: Burpple goes on the web to help you become a better foodie

Burpple is now on the web, after getting popular on iOS and Android devices.

Remember Burpple, the food discovery and journaling app? It was released on both the iOS and Android platforms earlier this year and has been extremely popular in its home country, Singapore. It also launched “Tummy Race“, a campaign which will send you to the highest gastronomic heaven you will ever know of with a year’s supply of Lao Ban beancurd.

And just today, it announced “Burpple Find”, its new entry into the web realm. While everyone is raving about going mobile, this new addition will help its growing community in Singapore to find curated food places while on the web.

Upon entry, users can search for places to eat by just typing keywords like “cafe”, “restaurant” or even going really specific with “Japanese restaurant in Holland Village.” When I searched for that, it gave me 10 results. The first four were Japanese restaurants. However, it also showed me restaurants in Holland Village which did not serve Japanese cuisine. There were also recommendations from Burpple users, which help curate the places.

It reminded me of the Open Graph system on Facebook, where users can discover using keywords. Users can also sort places according to prices or relevance. They can also log in using their social networks, in this case Facebook, should they want to save places to their wishlist or share. However, if they would rather not do so, they will still be able to search and see what others have commented.

Mobile has been popular. Why the web now?

Daniel Hum, co-founder and CTO at Burpple, said that although they are doing fairly well with their mobile apps, they have picked the web for a few reasons.

Firstly, to get wider reach and access to the mainstream crowd. He explained that they do not want to just limit the “Burpple experience” to the tech-savvy crowd, but anyone and everyone on the web. Secondly, it is to test a theory that they have: food discovery happens on the desktop. Do people plan their meals or where to go on the desktop? We do not know, but it seems Burpple might just have the answer soon. And lastly, development can occur quicker now. Daniel told e27, “One problem with mobile apps, especially iOS, is that it can take quite sometime to push an update. With the web we can change things overnight. Since Burpple Find is still very much a work in progress, we needed a platform that can help us quickly refine the concept.”

The web service is only limited to places in Singapore, for now, but Daniel shared that they will be looking at opening up the data to users everywhere. He also added that after the city-state, the biggest market would be the Philippines.

Still in an early stage of development, Burpple has also said that it will be rolling out updates over the next few days.

Image Credit: Burpple

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