Compath.me, a Tokyo-based start-up from Open Network Lab (a seed acceleration program by Digital Garage and Joi Ito) just brought us the official release of their iPhone app last week. On December 7, the start-up is expected to make a finalist pitch at Le Web, one of the world’s largest tech conferences happening this week in Paris, where the app will become available globally.
This photo-sharing app aims to help you discover locations and events around you. By sharing pictures and comments with other users, you can discover a place you might not otherwise find, they explain. When you post a picture, you will be requested to categorize it as scenery, restaurants, cafes, shopping, entertainment, or others. In addition to integration with other social network platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, it allows you to follow other users whom you’ve seen at the places you frequently visit, and in this way Compath aims to make an interest-based social network on the app.
The start-up’s CEO Hiromichi Ando explains:
“A survey says 43 percent of the people who try to find their local business actually uses Google, but it gives them unsatisfactory responses because the most useful tips are buried among miscellaneous search results. To avoid it, in the US 52 percent of people uses social media as an alternative. That’s why we need to invent a social media especially designed for discovering a place to visit and an experience to share. That is Compath.me.”
I believe this will be something like an serendipity engine.
In order to overtake a ‘Chicken-and-Egg’ problem, they have adopted a system giving repeat users options to raise their “grade.” The more pictures and comments you post, your status will be raised up in their grade system, which in turn motivates you to post more pictures. In addition, they have devoted themselves to simplify the process of picture posting, it now requires just only three steps: taking a picture, choosing a category, and noting a short description.
The app was developed and is being further developed by the team of seven people including CEO Ando and the CTO Shoko Sakurai. At their working space Open Network Lab, the ABC Loop team, a language learning start-up, are seated just next to Compath.me, and they helped a lot to develop the global version of the app in more natural English expression. They are currently receiving fundraising from several well-known VC firms in Japan, the US, and Europe. We’re very excited to see what they make at LeWeb.
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