Foursquare Wants to Move from Check-Ins To Recommendations

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley says the future of Foursquare, the location based service is "what its users are going to do, not what they are doing."

Right now Foursquare essentially tracks the realtime movements of its more than eight million users.

In the future, Foursquare wants to make use of the loads of data it’s collected on these realtime movements (600 million check-ins) to help users plan what they should do next.

From Check-Ins To Recommendations: A Glimpse Into The Future of Foursquare

Loopt introduces location-based Q&A

Loopt, a provider of location-based services, today announced "Qs," a new feature that allows users to answer questions and see other user’s responses in any physical business location. People might want to answer questions such as "where is the best happy hour special right now?"

Most people, perhaps as few as one percent, actually create the content displayed by location-based services such as Loopt. The company hopes simple "question and answer" formats will encourage more people to contribute.

The company plans on releasing the new feature first in San Francisco and then roll out from city to city.

Loopt introduces location-based Q&A feature

When Will Mobile Providers Move Big into Location-Based Advertising?

Location-based mobile apps are shaping up to be a major channel for local advertising, for some obvious reasons. Mobile devices are sensors that can alert advertisers to a potential customer's proximity.

That means proximity (maybe a better way of describing the value than "location") creates a new channel for local advertising revenues around which a proximity marketing business can be built.

Local advertising is a $133 billion revenue stream in the United States. You would expect Yellow Page companies, Facebook and Google to pitch mobile "proximity advertising" services.

But, at some point, mobile service providers are going to make a play as well. By definition, mobile providers know where their users are. All 293 million of them, or about 93 percent of the U.S. population. Though there are significant challenges to scale at the level of designing rich media campaigns using specific smartphone features, virtually all 293 million mobiles can receive text messages.

So it would make sense for carriers to create and sell proximity advertising with reach of 293 million potential customers. That sort of thing requires new levels of cooperation between the major carriers, though. Some believe they won't be able to work together. But the carrot of a universal ad platform built on proximity, available to 93 percent of all U.S. residents, has to be appealing. Isis, the mobile payments venture launched by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile USA, is one example.

5 Location And Mobile Tech Predictions For 2011

4% Use Check-In Services

About four percent of online adults use a service such as Foursquare or Gowalla that allows them to share their location with friends and to find others who are nearby, according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life project. On any given day, one percent of Internet users are using these services.

In a May 2010 survey, five percent of adult Internet users said they had used such a site.

Some seven percent of adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service, the report suggests. About eight percent of online adults ages 18 to 29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.

Google Maps On Android: Key Location Based Service

"The combination and integration of Google Maps, Places Pages, Street View and Navigation (with the phone and contacts) has created a kind of LBS juggernaut on the Android device that will increasingly prove challenging to compete with," says Greg Sterling, a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land.

Right now, no such combination of services exists on the iPhone, which makes it a more “open” playing field for location-based services and local publishers, he argues.

"I use the Google services on my Evo almost exclusively now to find local information and directions," says Sterling. "And yesterday Google updated Maps for Android to make Place Pages on the device look and operate more like Places on the PC."

I'd have to agree that the navigation and mapping features of the Evo are the top reason the Evo has value, though I would rank "voice search" number two.

Google Maps On Android Becoming An LBS Juggernaut

Facebook a New 800-Pound Gorilla in Location Services?

A rational observer would have to conclude that Facebook's "Places" will have repercussions on independent providers of social location solutions.

Ditto for Skype.

Top 10 Location-Based Social Networks

That's a lot of competitors in the location-based social connections space, and an awful lot of competitors focused on friends finding each other around town.

CheckPoints will plot a different course, selling mobile access and connections with potential customers when those users are physically in stores.

If most check-in services today are aimed at younger users who most likely are single, CheckPoints is aimed at most other people who shop, including mothers who might be at Target or Wal-Mart.


Todd DiPaola, CheckPoints CEO, is pretty sure there are lots of practical things check-in services can provide, other than young people meeting each other.

Consider the $100 billion or so large consumer packaged goods companies spend to promote their brands and products using coupons and other activities. CheckPoints believes there is a major business for a “check in” app that actually can be used by major CPG brands to interact with consumers while those consumers are inside retail locations where their goods are sold.

Launching in mid-to-late September, CheckPoints will offer a campagin-based service that allows brands to connect in various ways with consumers inside retail outlets, using an application that includes a bar code reader. Swiping the reader automatically creates a check-in and then can trigger an immersive rich media session, a Facebook or Twitter connection or any other connection a CPG company can envision that includes a web address.

CheckPoints appears to be among the very-first firms to use social connections and location in a way that is directly of benefit to most large consumer products brands.

If a user goes to the grocery store, a check in occurs and CheckPoints alerts the user to participaing products in the store. Users don’t need to buy the product, and just need to scan the barcode of featured products.

Users get points or coupons that can be used to get goods ranging from airline miles to electronics.
The CheckPoints app awards points to consumers who check in at retail locations, scan product barcodes and play interactive games. Points can be redeemed in the CheckPoints Reward Store.

The system might be likened to a combinatiion loyalty program and point-of-presence marketing tool, with game or entertainment aspects.

For brands, the opportunity is to target and reach potential prospects while they are actually inside retail locations, in real time. From the CheckPoints perspective, what is attractive is that there is no need to strike deals with actual retailers, but only the brands themselves.

DiPaola says users can download the app and start using it right away, without creating more-detailed profiles. After users redeem rewards, they can share with friends to win additional points.

The company is self-financed at a level DiPaola says will allow it to reach critical mass without additional outside funding.

Google CEO Talks Up Synergy Between Mobile, Local, Social Networking

It doesn't take much insight to predict that Google will, sometime relatively soon, be making new moves in the location based services area.

Google already has made major and successful investments in mapping, local search, mobility, geo-location and navigation, for example. It also has made investments in location-based services that haven't gotten traction.

CEO Eric Schmidt recently has been talking up the synergies between mobility, local search and social networking.

“Foursquare and Gowalla are pretty impressive," says Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "They show you the power of mobile,social and local,” Schmidt said.

“Google will play in that market in a lot of ways,” Schmidt added.

http://www.mobilemarketingwatch.com/lbs-roundup-foursquare-improves-its-looks-google-hints-at-gowalla-acquisition-8289/

Real Estate Arguably is the Location-Based App With the Greatest Commercial Value

Mobile real estate apps, such as those available from Zillow, Redfin, ZipRealty, Century 21 and Realtor.com, have an obvious value. Home hunting is, by definition, an "out and about" experience.

So it is quite valuable to look up sale and pricing information about the house you are standing in front of, as well as sales history for other homes in the area.

In Zillow’s case, the app finds homes for sale nearby your current location, or you can look up the value of the house you are standing by.

Location-Based Apps Still Early on Growth Curve

A new analysis by Forrester Research can be viewed as an excuse not to dive into location-based services, or location-based advertising, at the moment.

Only about three percent of people surveyed by Forrester Research say they use location apps, such as check-in apps, frequently or at least once a week.

Some 84 percent of respondents say they don't even know what the apps are.

None of those findings should surprise anybody, at this point. LBS still is in its infancy. Not many people use any new device or application, at first.

Placebook: Location-Based Service Emerges from Stealth

A new location-based service comes out of stealth.

Are Location-Based Services All Hype?

Location is a feature, not a business. Real-time and location-based marketing in all its forms might be the huge business many expect.But much attention at the moment is focused on the "research project" aspects of location, and not on the crucial issues of how to sustain the use of such features on a wide basis over time, and how to make it useful for average users. We aren't there yet.

Are Location-Based Services All Hype?

$13 Billion in Location-Based Mobile Service Revenue by 2014

Location-based local search and information services will be used by nearly 1.5 billion mobile users by 2014, according to Juniper Research. Total revenues from all mobile location-based services are expected to reach $12.7 billion by 2014.

How Best Buy Wants to Create Business Value from "Location"

It's easy to get caught up in the hype about "location-based services." It's easy to dismiss the notion as well. But Best Buy thinks it can use the location information that increasingly is part of the mobile experience to bolster its sales, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Berst Buy is using Shopkick to create mobile appliucations for iPhone and Android smartphones that detect when shoppers are in or near stores and offers rewards targeted to them.

Shopkick's apps might also use mobile cameras to enable user scanning of bar codes on items to offer product information, coupons or other marketing offers.

None of that is too extremely cutting edge. Loopt provides special offers and coupons from retailers nearby. FourSquare Labs turns physical locaition into a game, where users "check in" at locations.

The goal of the Shopkick app—which is to launch this summer—is "not just to drive foot traffic, but to turn offline stores into interactive worlds" that are more entertaining to shoppers, adds Cyriac Roeding, the CEO and co-founder of Shopkick.

Shopkick expects to be paid for its performance, such as driving additional sales and bringing in new customers.

CauseWorld has also been testing users' interest in less altruistic motivations. In early April, Causeworld offered users 10% off Best Buy purchases in exchange for checking in. Mr. Roeding said a high single-digit percentage of those who checked in at Best Buy during the testalso used the coupon to make a purchase.

To go mainstream, all of these applications may still have to overcome privacy concerns about allowing one's smartphone—and big companies—to keep track of your location.

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Why Cloud Computing is the Finger Pointing at the Moon, Not the Moon

The thing about "cloud computing" is that it is very difficult to isolate and separate from other broader changes in computing infrastructure, all of which are happening simultaneously. We are, most would agree, on the cusp of a change in basic change in computational architecture from "PC" centric to something that might be called "mobile Internet computing," for lack of a more-descriptive and well-understood term.

The point, simply, is that the shift to "cloud-based" computing is inextricably bound up with other crucial changes such as a shift to use of mobile devices as the key end user access device, the rise of Web-based, hosted and remote applications and user experiences.

For most people, businesses and organizations, the shift of geolocational "places" where computing takes place will occur in the background. The main change is the evolution in things that can be done with computational resources.

Aside from something like an order of magnitude more devices that are connected to computing resources, the new mobile Internet will mean the creation of something like a "sensing" fabric will be put into place. Cameras will create "eyes," microphones will create "mouths to speak," and "ears" to hear. Kinesthetic capabilities will create new ways to interact with information overlaid on the "real" or physical world.

All those new devices also will create new possibilities for enriching "location" information. GPS is fine for fixing a location in terms of latitude and longitude. But what about altitude? What about locating devices, people or locations that are in high-rise buildings? Emergency services and first responders need that additional information.

But the possibilities for "sensing" networks grow exponentially once communications, altitude, attitude and other three-dimensional information is available to any application. Lots of medical and recreational devices now can capture biomedical information in real time. Add real-time communications and many other possibilities will open up.

The point is simply that cloud computing as computational architecture will enable other changes, going well beyond simple ability to send and receive information of any sort. The shift to distributed computing will, with mobile sensors, devices and people, lead to vastly-different ability to monitor the environment, process and annotate or contextualize events and objects in the real world with granularity.

That is not to understate the challenges and opportunities for a wide range of companies in the ecosystem, caused directly by a shift of core competencies. By definition, a change of computing eras has always been accompanied by a completely new list of industry leaders.

Keenly aware of that historic precedent, none of today’s computing giants will take anything for granted as the new era begins to take hold. At the same time, it is hard not to predict that key stakeholders of just about every sort might find themselves severely disrupted by the shift.

So far, whole industries ranging from media and music to telecom, advertising and retailing have found themselves struggling to adjust to a world with lower barriers to entry and radically different ways of creating and delivering products and services people want.

As the shift to the next computing paradigm occurs, many more human activities and business models will find themselves subject to attack and change.

Within the global communications business, it should be noted that the incremental growth of just about everything “mobile” will hit an inflection point. Whether that happened in 2009, will happen in 2010 or takes just a bit longer is not the point.

To talk about a world where a trillion devices are connected, in real time, to the Internet, to servers, software and applications, is to talk about a world where mobility IS communications. Mobility will not be merely an important segment of the business, it will be THE business at the end user level.

That is not to say the core backbone networks, data centers and other long-haul and even access networks are unimportant; to the contrary they will be the fundamental underpinning of the “always on, always connected” ecosystem of applications and business activity which will depend on those assets.

Without denigrating in any way the “pipes,” dumb or otherwise, that will be the physical underpinning of all the applications, there is only so much value anybody can wring out of plumbing. Most of the economic value is going to reside elsewhere.

That said, there already are numerous ways to look at cloud computing infrastructure, as it is used to build businesses that create added value.

Almost by definition, cloud computing enables consumption of software and applications that use remote computing facilities. We sometimes call this “software as a service” and the trend is an early precursor of what happens in the shift from PC-based to mobile and cloud-based computing.

Such uses of cloud computing will have intermediate effects on end user experiences. Lots of everyday computing or application experiences will shift away from local computing or storage, and towards on-the-fly rendering.

The shift to utility computing—enterprise use of cloud computing—will shift data centers from “owned and operated” facilities to outsourced services. But that likely will have less impact than the shift to SaaS-based applications.

The former is an “industrial” shift; the latter is more an “end user” shift. And all cloud computing effects will have most impact when they directly touch end user experiences.

Utility computing contributes to many end user experiences, but much utility computing is “behind the scenes.” Hosted applications are, and increasingly will be, everyday experiences for most human beings.

Web services are the area where end user impact will be noticed most strikingly, and where the most-profound transformations will occur, as Web services—mostly mobile—will touch end users with services and features that cannot be provided any other way.

Cloud computing is important, to be sure. But we will miss the bigger picture in focusing too narrowly on what it means for data centers, utility computing services, transport and access providers. Even the huge trend towards mobility is a sub-plot.

Cloud computing will enable an era of ubiquitous computing, with social and economic consequences we cannot begin to imagine. It is a huge business change for all of us in communications. But it is just a finger pointing at the moon; not the moon itself.

Geolocation's Downside

Don't get me wrong. Location services will be really useful. But as with everything else connected with the Internet, there are downsides. This is one of them. UYou may want to use location services. But you probably don't want to allow "broadcasting" of that location.

The Secret Service knows the location of POTUS on the second or third floor of the White House. The rest of us should not.

A Location Based Service Somebody Needs to Develop

As someone who spends lots of time at conferences and trade shows, and who randomly bumps into people, it occurs to me that one location-based service that would really be helpful is a way to have your mobile alert you when somebody you have been communicating with over a recent user-defined period is in your vicinity. The reason is simple enough: quite often one works with people for years without ever physically meeting them. And if the opportunity presents itself, one would like to stroll over and say hello.

The issue is that I don't know how well GPS will work when all of us are inside a large meeting hall. Bluetooth would help for short distances, I suppose. It might also be nice if the app could run in the background when synchronized with one's notebook or desktop and collect photos of your contacts, putting them into your contact database so you know roughly what the person you want to meet looks like.

For that matter, scouring public sources and putting a picture into my contact directory might also be nice if I weren't a Facebook user, which essentially provides that function.