Spanish startup 11870, a geo-localized content provider, has launched their iPhone app. 11870 is probably the most well known social restaurant directory and guide in Spain and competes locally with services like Qype.
Though the general public associates the 11870 brand with restaurants, the company is evolving, from a Yelp-like restaurant guide to a lead generation platform for local small & medium sized service providers, similar to Servicemagic for instance.
11870.com now on iPhone from 11870.com on Vimeo.
The service now has 24,000 registered users and over 1,400,000 monthly visitors, generating 190,000 opinions to date about 20.512 cities. 11870 has had an open API that has resulted in a number of mashups. The official app is launched in conjunction with Spanish based Tooio, which developed the 11870 iPhone app based on their own technology.
Tooio and 11870 are an obvious match, wherein 11870 provides the content on Tooio’s platform. Tooio, a mobile geo-localization platform that allows its users to discover and share points of interest and events, locate friends, receive proximity coupons, is currently available both for iPhone and Android.
If you haven’t heard of 11870, you probably don’t live in Spain and even then, you should probably get around to checking them out, if you have any plans for visiting. It was started by Jesus Encinar, Roberto Heredia, François Derbaix, Nacho Puell and Fernando Encinar.
Backed initially by Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa (bbk), since their early days, the restaurant review directory has gone through a number of transformations. Most recently Vocento Group acquired 33% of the company in May 2009 and with it the company’s business model became aggressive.