An Ex-Foursquare Engineer Is Bringing OpenTable Restaurant Reservations To Facebook

YouTube/O'Reilly MediaJustin Moore.Starting today, you can make restaurant reservations via Facebook's mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Justin Moore, a former Foursquare engineer in charge of the company's Explore feature, led up Facebook's efforts to integrate data from OpenTable, the popular online reservation service, into the app.

The new feature lets you book reservations at 20,000 restaurants throughout North America.

"It's already a great experience to find places nearby. You know, places you may not have known about before," Facebook Engineer Manager Justin Moore tells Business Insider.

By combining OpenTable data with Facebook, Facebook hopes to better enable its users to act on those recommendations, Moore says. So if Facebook recommends a restaurant nearby, you can make a reservation directly from the app.

Yelp, on the other hand, has offered OpenTable integration since 2010. Just last month, Yelp launched a slightly similar feature that aims to get its users to take action. The Yelp Platform works with Delivery.com and Eat24 to let users order food for delivery or pickup. In the next few months, Yelp will add categories like spas, yoga studios, salons, and dentist appointments.

As part of Facebook's mobile update, it also integrated data from Rovi to show you local listings for TV shows and movies. So let's say you pull up the Facebook page for "Breaking Bad," you'll be able to see local listings based on your time zone.