Tokyo Startup Builds a Better Facebook App

Tokyo’s Wondershake is a startup best known for having developed a remarkable LBS smartphone app. It has raised a total of more than $360,000 from several incubators including CyberAgent Ventures and Sunbridge Corp.

But more recently the startup has introduced a new iPhone app called Cake the Reader, which is a Facebook reader app that allows you to browse and comment on your Facebook newsfeed (pictured below). Featuring impressive smoothness when you flick over posts and switch Facebook groups, the app has hit third spot in the social networking category of the Apple App Store in Japan only two days since its launch on August 3rd. Currently it is only outranked by NHN Japan’s Line and Facebook’s native smartphone app.

The Facebook smartphone app is widely reviled and mocked for its poor responsiveness. While this new Cake app limits its features only to browsing/commenting/liking your newsfeeds and participating groups, it does all that very smoothly. The theory in its limited feature-set being that these functions are good enough to cover nearly all of what you want to do with Facebook.

According to the Wondershake’s CEO, Satoshi Suzuki, the app was developed thanks to a sudden inspiration they had back at a hackathon event at Open Network Lab last February. The startup team had been trying to develop another app but shifted its efforts to improving the communication tool that everyone was using 24/7 but still consistently complained about.

In addition to this project, just last April the startup also launched a casual kind of portal for event organizing and ticketing called Tsudoi (web/iOS app).