Urbanspoon is a website that recommends local restaurants based on reviews and tastes.  In a way its a competitor of Yelp.  Urbanspoon was founded by three former employees at Jobster, Patrick O’Donnell, Ethan Lowry, and Adam Doppelt.  They built the service without the need of venture capital investments, something that Jobster heavily depended on.  InterActiveCorp (IAC) bought that self-funded company.

Although there isn’t an official figure, TechCrunch believes it is “something in the millions of dollars range” since the company is already fairly profitable.  Urbanspoon used IAC’s CitySearch reviews for customers looking for restaurants.  The acquisition talks have been taking place since the second half of last year.

Urbanspoon’s popularity had especially grown from their free iPhone application which finds out where you are located and recommends a random restaurant using a slot machine style.  Urbanspoon will remain based in Seattle and will update their iPhone application soon.  Now that Urbanspoon has access to IAC’s various other Internet properties, you never know what they will come up with next.