Untappd is a social app designed for beer enthusiasts to rate, review, and share their beer experiences with friends, while also discovering new beers through recommendations. Co-founder Greg Avola highlights the app's educational aspect and gamification features, such as earning badges for exploring new beers. The app, initially built with Cordova, transitioned to using the Ionic framework for its dynamic binding and simplified UI elements, enhancing its native app appearance and functionality. The development team leveraged multiple plugins and used Grunt for project setup and template optimization, maintaining two separate code bases for iOS and Android to manage platform-specific features efficiently. Avola emphasizes the benefits of developing hybrid apps for rapid market deployment and plans to upgrade to Ionic 2. Ionic's social sharing capabilities further enhance the user experience by allowing seamless integration with platforms like Twitter and Facebook.