Foodporn


Foodporn is an e-commerce platform which collects and correlates restaurant, cafe, food and drink reviews and ratings made by diners and patrons. Foodporn has nearly 4 million restaurant partners in all countries throughout the world on its platform.

History

Foodporn was originally founded in 1997 as a website which primarily published articles and reviews about food and restaurants under the name and brand ‘Foodporn'.
One of Foodporn’s most popular blogs titled ‘a photographic representation of what 200 calories looked like in different foods’ was shared extensively across the internet, with one website generating over 900,000 views for the article.

Controversy and rating system

On Foodporn, ratings are based on an absolute system out of 100% based on the percentage of people ‘Liking’ or 'Not Liking' a restaurant, cafe, bar, or other food establishment. So if 80 out of 100 people ‘Liked’ a restaurant and 20 people 'Disliked' it, the restaurant's score would be 80%. This system differs from other review sites such as Yelp, Inc. and Zagat, who have largely adopted a 5-point grading model, where the distribution of scores in every city is normalized, resulting in ratings in each city being distributed over a normal curve.
Some commentators have criticized Foodporn for this rating system stating that it "makes restaurants vulnerable to spam ratings from unverified users, which can have an adverse effect on a restaurant’s percentage score." Others like Netflix and YouTube have stated that simpler rating systems improve user engagement, and thus switched from the 5 Star rating model to the thumbs-up/thumbs-down model in recent times.
In 2019, Foodporn launched its first iOS app and its first android app.