Breadcrumbs app creates trail to secret spots
The newest way to discover a city is here – a digital trail of breadcrumbs in app form.
Two years ago, then-Massey student Cameron Brodie was tasked with solving a problem for his final project. He decided he wanted to help students to find their place when moving to a new city for university.
Brendan Platt, on the other hand, arrived home from a year overseas as Brodie tackled the problem. Brodie’s idea to link together people with interesting spots they found immediately stood out to him and the Breadcrumbs app was born.
‘‘We decided to have a bit of a crack at it and two years later we’re still going,’’ Platt said.
The app works by asking users to drop ‘‘crumbs’’ whenever they visit a spot they discover, whether that’s a cafe with the perfect flat white or a hiking track with a lookout point.
‘‘A crumb is an image, a description,’’ Platt said.
As people drop their own crumbs or look at other people’s crumbs and rate their information, the app learns what they like to do and can suggest activities and spots around their interests. ‘‘One of the early concerns was always going to be the amount of content from organic users and that’s something we’ve been pleasantly surprised with,’’ Platt said.
So far, a couple thousand of these digital crumbs have been dropped on the app. Both Platt and Brodie have dropped about 50 themselves, but some users have dropped up to 100.
Users have been dropping information at spots all around the world – many of them are from Kiwis taking the app overseas with them, but Platt said tourists had been picking up the app too.
As opposed to a website like Trip Advisor, Breadcrumbs is more personalised and rather than asking people to rate businesses or spots, asks people to rate the information left with crumbs.
Platt and Brodie are both keen hikers and said their favourite crumbs they’d discovered from other people were around new tracks and areas to explore. The pair will be showing off their app to students at Victoria University today. Platt said they hoped the app would be used by people looking to make a city their new home.