Having a look around online, there aren’t a huge deal of dedicated supercar spotting apps out there. I’m not sure if that is a good or bad thing. And the ones I have found seem small, underdeveloped and haven’t had a huge amount of downloads.
The first main piece of competition that I found is an app called Car Spot, which appears to be more like Instagram but for automotive fans. It is a place where people can share pictures of the cars they have spotted, with a stream full of images taken by car lovers. There is the chance to follow users and track your own activity.
The app has a basic look and function, it’s easy to use and the branding looks smart, but it doesn’t have much substance. My idea combines a lot of different aspects – social media, location, editorial and advertising – while this one is very social media focused. It also doesn’t seem to be affiliated with any brands, which is perhaps why it has so few downloads. The visual side of it isn’t particularly refined and it is missing the community driven feel that would make it more popular.
Another rival is the Sighted website, which I only recently became aware of after they interacted with one of my supercar-related tweets. It is very similar to my own idea, using a map to place the location of supercars, with pictures being posted on the locations. The website has posts from different countries and uses Twitter and Instagram hashtags to develop the pinpoints, as well as from user uploads.
There is also the function of filtering the updates depending on the tags the posts include, which is actually a really good idea and one I hadn’t thought of. But while the main feature is very similar to my own, it doesn’t have the additional extras which I think will draw people to an app like mine and isn’t a particularly well-known brand, unlike Car Throttle, which my app will be a spin-off of.
But the overall look and way the website has been developed and built looks solid and is very easy to use, something I hope to also achieve with my own app. Going through research, there seems to be a gap in the market for this kind of app and there are few direct competitors, although places like Sighted will be tough to match.
Jack Leslie 