location-based services

Is Foursquare Interesting or DOA?

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , , ,

I have a love-hate relationship with Foursquare.

On one hand, I think it’s given location-based services a bad name with its goofy badges, the silly “Mayor of” feature, and the lack of traction when it comes to creating a platform that businesses can leverage. On the other hand, Foursquare now has 6.5 million users, two million check-ins/day and 420 million check-ins since its launch.

So the challenge and question is what to make of Foursquare. Is an interesting enough service to include as part of a social media strategic plan? Or is a niche service with limited appeal as a marketing and sales vehicle? My sense is its remains the latter even though many companies would love to use Foursquare if there were better services to meet their needs and goals.

The biggest problem for Foursquare is many companies don’t consider it a serious part of the social media landscape. Second, there’s still little clarity in terms of how to leverage Foursquare aside from offering coupons to people who check-in. This means companies are looking for substance or ideas before committing to Foursquare, which has to compete with blogs, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube within a social media strategic plan

Perhaps Foursquare’s efforts have been focused on growth, which is impressive in the scheme of things but no where near the expectations it was the next Twitter when it launched in 2008. Foursquare was going to take the world by storm, and provide social media users with a real way to leverage location-based services.

To date, Foursquare is a niche service in a market that many still believe has huge potential. The idea of being able to deliver the right service or content at the right time at the right place is the “Holy Grail”. This explains why there is still optimism about the LBS market and, as important, the entry of new players such as Facebook Places.

While still in beta and, unfortunately, not in Canada, an intriguing new LBS start-up is Bizzy.com, which combines LBS with personalized recommendation for places to eat, shop and play based on places that you like. Bizzy matches this information against other people with similar interests to generate recommendations about other places you might like. Having not used the service after discovering nothing was available for Canadian cities, it is impossible to declare whether Bizzy is the real deal but what is interesting is the idea it generates insight and ideas based on information you provide – as opposed to simply having to check-in to places you visit.

My take is 2011 will be an exciting year for LBS but it is possible Foursquare won’t come along for the ride. With the ubiquity of smartphones and the growing popularity of tablet computers, there is a growing population looking for better, more interesting and more useful LBS services. If a start-up can create a service that does a good job of meeting demand, the LBS world could be their oyster.

More: Mashable has a short post on how Foursquare has now been translated into five more languages.

Finally, Privacy is in the Spotlight

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

For the past year, it feels like I’ve been on a personal crusade about digital privacy and how people need to pay more attention to how much information they disclose online. But in many ways, it been like whistling into the wind because there was so much enthusiasm about social media and sharing information and content.

I thought maybe it was just my own personal biases or perhaps my view that privacy is still important was out of step with how the digital world is evolving. When you’re going against the grain, it can be disconcerting when everyone else doesn’t seem to be worried about what seemed to be an important issue.

But now it seems the world has finally caught on to privacy. You can probably give WikiLeaks credit for thrusting the spotlight on privacy. Suddenly, people seem to be looking at privacy differently. They have realized that Facebook’s privacy two-step, Google’s plans to photograph everything, and the dangers of broadcasting your location to the world via location-based services actually have a downside. ReadWriteWeb has even declared privacy to be one of the top trends of 2010.

My reaction is: What took everyone so long?

Seriously. There is so much giddy excitement about being open and transparent, too many people have happily surrendered their privacy by disclosing everything and anything about what they’re doing, thinking or going.

The biggest culprit is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who idealistically believes that being more open will somehow make the world a better place. That’s easy to say when the growth of your business hinges on disclosing more information so advertisers have more opportunities to target consumers with eerily relevant offers.

What has been fascinating is how so many members of the media and blogosphere have gone along for the ride, enthusiastically promoting all these new privacy-killing online services while pretty much ignoring how they have been waging a steady attack on our privacy.

Maybe WikiLeaks has managed to turn the tide. Maybe we’ve finally reached a point in time when more people will start to seriously explore privacy and examine the kind of information they disclose to the world. Maybe I’m being too optimistic but here’s hoping we’re on the verge of a pro-privacy trend.

Here are some of previous posts about privacy:

- Is the digital pendulum finally swing back?
- The downsides and dangers of geo-location
- Facebook should give up on privacy

Forget Foursquare, Yelp’s Where It’s At

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

As you might have discovered in previous posts, I’m not a big Foursquare fan.

My lack of enthusiasm has much to do with the fact it doesn’t seem to provided much value other than the “thrill” of getting badges. TThat’s not enough to go through the trouble of broadcasting my location. Granted, Foursquare appears to be getting better as it makes deals with content players and corporate partners but I still don’t see enough “meat”.

A service that has a lot more appeal while offering many of the same features as Foursquare is Yelp. Until recently, I hadn’t been much of a Yelp user but the more I user it, the more value delivers. For example, I’m visiting New York this weekend and despite doing some research, I’m unprepared when it comes to knowing where to go and what to eat.

This is where Yelp comes into play, particularly when using the iPhone app. By using the search or nearby features, Yelp makes it easy to find places to eat, visit, drink, have coffee, banks, etc. There’s also reviews from users, and, get this, the ability to check in when visiting places.

The biggest challenge facing Foursquare is it needs to move into places where there’s already strong competition. The fact Foursquare has built its foothold on being able the check-in may not be enough of a differentiator to fend off players such as Yelp, Facebook and Google that are moving into the location-based market.

Foursquare’s growing popularity has always been puzzling to me because the original value proposition was so one-dimensional. And despite Foursquare’s continued growth, the reality is it still doesn’t have the traction that everyone expected when it burst onto the scene.

To me Foursquare feels like a lot like Friendster, which had its day in the sun before becoming a second-tier social network.

Foursquare Supplanting Twitter? Ha!

By Mark Evans in Social Media 1 Comment Tags: , , ,

Maybe what happens in Austin (and the South by Southwest conference) should stay in Austin.

SXSW strikes me a great place to have a good time, do some networking/socializing and take in a few panels. But it also seems like a lot of navel-gazing and backslapping happens. As well, you have to keep in mind SXSW is where the digit-rati come to roil themselves into a lather about the next, new shiny toy.

Case in point is Foursquare, Gowalla and the location-based services world. If there was one blog post about LBS, there were a hundred about how SXSW was going to be the big launch pad – much like Twitter jumped out of obscurity and into the mainstream in 2008. The buzz about LBS is just another illustration of how the high-tech world keeps consumers engaged and, hopefully, buying.

And while I’m sure a lot of people used Foursquare and Gowalla during SXSW, I didn’t get the impression from the coverage or tweet-age that LBS was all the rage. But that didn’t seem to stop some people from proclaiming “Long live Foursquare; say goodbye to Twitter”.

Case in point is CNet’s Daniel Terdiman, who declared that Foursquare and Gowalla are “forced to be reckoned with this year”. Aside from lots of buzz and blog enthusiasm, I think Terdiman’s assertion is premature. So fare, Foursquare and Gowalla are still small, niche services that have yet to demonstrate they’re anything more than novelties renting the spotlight until the next shiny trinket comes along.

While you can draw comparisons between the early days of Twitter and Foursquare, the biggest difference is Twitter exploded because it offered lots of different people value as a user-friendly service to communicate, share, market and sell. While Foursquare has potential, I don’t see the same kind of mainstream utility. That could change as Foursquare evolves into more than simply a service to broadcast where you’re located, but until that happens, my enthusiasm will be held in check.

Do you agree with Terdiman or think he’s part of the hype machine?

More: Looks like there’s some backlash about SXSW Interactive, and how it’s evolved.

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