Location, Location, Location – What’s Your Location?

It is often said that in Business 3 things matter the most, Location, Location and Location. Well, that paradigm has shifted to the Web too. The phenomenal success of Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown etc bear witness to this. The buzz that these Location Based Social Networks(LBSNs) have generated over the last two years is remarkable. The use of Location Based Services for GPS etc is a no-brainer. But the likes of Foursquare, Gowalla and countless others have benefitted greatly from adding a social aspect . Modus Operandi There are essentially 2 types of LBSN’s. Passive and Active. The best example of a Passive LBSN is Google Latitude. With over 3 million users, the service shows a user where his are friends on a Google Map. Let’s face it. Something that ‘passively’ tracks your location is a little intrusive and quite simply, boring! Enter Active LBSNs. This is where the likes of Foursquare and Gowalla have cashed in. With the introduction of concepts like Checkins, Mayors, Badges, Pins, Trips, Spots etc. They added a gaming aspect. Besides the run-off the mill spotting friends. Users can compete to complete trips and earn badges and bragging rights, and more recently on various promotions and deals(more on this later). Such is the frenzy that a 15 year old boy and 51 year old man were competing to be the first person to Checkin from the NorthPole . The clincher There is no denying the fact that we live in an ephemeral world. Today’s Orkut is..well..yesterday’s Orkut. In order to remain relevant – entities online need to keep redefining themselves. Sure, bragging rights will keep people engaged for sometime. For a significant number the fad may last a few months at best. This is were LBSNs have struck gold, using the oldest trick in the book to entice users. Rewards! Smart , innovative and timely tie-ups and deals have kept user engagement at an all time high. Promotions via these services have met with resounding success among the tech savvy. Big brands and small businesses alike are looking to latch onto this phenomena. Foursquare and Starbucks in May announced a deal to reward to all Starbucks’ Mayors. This wasn’t their first major tie-up and certainly wasn’t the last. The last few months have seen many high profile and interesting deals with these location startups. Starbucks’ deal with Foursquare ensures that Mayors get useful discounts. In February this year, Foursquare also signed a deal with Zagat, a restaurant rating guide. This deal goes beyond the obvious, apart from offering foursquare users reviews and recommendations. It also extends a carrot on a stick to mayors by planning to have a “Meet the Mayor” web video series. It has also signed deals with Departments of Tourism in Pennsylvania and Chicago with the obvious aim of targeting tourists and newbies. These deals have tremendous potential to be be turned into cash cows in the future through several local deals and possibly advertising. Showbiz isn’t far behind, the movie Valentine’s Day and HBO series ‘How to make it in America’ have also created badges using the service. And also an interesting move onto campus with a Harvard page to allow students to explore the campus. It could also serve as virtual notice board for the campus allowing students to see what’s happening at a venue at any given time. I wonder if anyone has created a mashup with Google maps. Even though foursquare seems to generate most of the hype, the others aren’t sitting back. Gowalla announced deals of its own with National Geographic and Washington Post . It also tied up with USA today to offer travel tips . An interesting development would be if the likes of Foursquare or Gowalla enter into tie-ups with Group Buying and Flash sales sites. Based on the number of Checkins in an area, they could announce deals after consulting with local partners. Conversely, Group Buying sites could also make use of Location data and notify users when they are in the vicinity of a sale. It would be more targeted and effective than only tweeting. The big boys are coming… With the hype and attention, these SLBS also attracted the big boys into the location space. There was a need to be globally local. Twitter announced that it would Geotag it’s tweets and even localized trends. Yahoo acquired an Indonesian Location based Social Network – Koprol, entered into a deal with Nokia for its mapping technology and even tried to buy out foursquare during the latter’s most recent round of funding. Google Buzz came with a Buzz layer on Google Maps. Facebook also tentatively began looking into the location space and recently hinted (again) that they would coming out with something soon. Twitter and Facebook have also entered into independent deals with Localeze for location data. If people dint think that the Location space was going to be BIG. They will have to now. There seems to be enough room for everyone! Where is India? If you’re wondering where India is on the LBSN scene? Well, pretty far behind. Foursquare and Gowalla do see some usage, along with the Buzz layer on Google Maps but you’re unlikely to find much on any of them..yet! Don’t let that stop you from using it though. Somebody has to start somewhere. The biggest drawbacks are the lack of high speed mobile internet and a smartphone market that is still in it’s infancy. Let’s face it – with the current Edge/GPRS speeds on offer – going to a place then firing up an application and checking in is likely to be painful and in the absence of flat data rates there isn’t much scope for Passive ones like Google Latitude either. Using text messages for something similar (like Dodgeball ..which eventually became Latitude) is unlikely to catch on either. Besides, the number of location aware phones isn’t too large. Expect this to grow rapidly though. And if 3G does roll out later this year, at relatively affordable rates, the Location Bug just might catch on here too. This doesn’t mean we have to sit back to wait. ‘CheckIns’ have tremendous marketing potential and establishments will do well to circumvent the lack of Location based social networks and hook on to the popular ones like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter. Offer a discount to anyone who updates their status message with their whereabouts or tweets about them. Sounds simple enough. Any takers? Pitfalls The biggest problem associated with them is privacy. Needless to say that people who are genuinely concerned will probably not use them anyway. But for those who do, how smart is it to let people know where you are all the time? And imagine if you feign illness to avoid meeting someone only for them to see you checking into some place later the same evening? Dumb as it may seem, as usage of these apps becomes second nature, such blunders are certainly possible, Another problem is that of accuracy. Apparently they can be wrong in pin pointing your location upto 40% of the time . And of course, there’s the cheating. People can fake checkins to “earn” badges and rewards which can ruin it for those who do “play” honestly. Oh! And incase you’re wondering what happened to the race to the North Pole. The boy won . But not to be outdone Eric Larson(the 51 year old) became the first person to tweet from there. Looks like everybody wins. Related Posts Facebook Looks To Rule The Web With Location, Apps & Credits! WATFive: Twitter-Facebook Traffic Stats, Yahoo’s New IM, Google Lighter Factor, Transmute, MobileFacebook The ‘Free’ and ‘Fare’ Internet! Facebook Now The King Of Internet, Tops Google In Number Of Visits Brand Wars: Facebook, Twitter, Google and Coke? Well, Uh… What? Need Help With Social Media Marketing?? – Contact WATConsult – India’s Leading Social Media Agency Submit Your Work To The 1st International Social Media Awards

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Location, Location, Location – What’s Your Location?

Tagged as: marketing, media, mobile, mobile-internet, nokia, orkut, tie ups, yahoo