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Australian Urbanspoon users migrate to new platform

Zomato, a restaurant search and discovery app that provides information for more than1.4 million restaurants, has completed the transition of Australian users following its $52 million acquisition of Urbanspoon at the beginning of the year.

June 1, 2015

Zomato, a restaurant search and discovery app that provides information for more than1.4 million restaurants, has completed the transition of Australian users following its $52 million acquisition of Urbanspoon at the beginning of the year.

As of Wednesday 3 June, Zomato will migrate Urbanspoon's users over to the its platform, which will mix Urbanspoon's content with a host of new features designed to deliver a host of new opportunities to restaurant owners, the company said.

The new website and app blends the old and the new via best practices for user-generated content supplemented with curated collections from Zomato's own 'feet on the street' experts.

Zomato's new core content features for users include:

• Scanned menus, photos, and geocoded coordinates for restaurants, sourced by Zomato's massive street team
• Curated collections for each city, including 'Trending this Week', 'Artisan Bakeries', 'Paleo Friendly', 'Kickass Burgers', and lots more
• A 5-point rating scale, which replaces Likes and Dislikes used on Urbanspoon
• Leaderboards and Foodie Rankings that help recognize the most prolific contributors in a city
• 'Spoonbacks', which enable Bloggers to easily publish their reviews on their blog and Zomato
• Inspiration from fellow foodies in the form of a feed which shows you where your friends and people you follow are eating
• A personalized Food Journey in the form of a timeline, which helps you keep track of all the places you eat, with chronologically sorted reviews, photos and check-ins

Analytics include data how restaurants are performing compared to other restaurants in the area, events sharing, daily deals, special menus and hyperlocal advertising. Over the next couple of months, Zomato will roll out online ordering, followed by table reservations, cashless payment facilities and a point of sale system for restaurants, the company said.