Recently WSJ.com had an article on Foursquare which used location based systems to allow users to share their locations and hot spots. A friend of mine started a similar company, buzzd.com, which is really the exact same system as far as I can tell. The bet being that friends will want to know or care where other friends are.
I just don't see this being a successful software or program. This might be me personally, but I don't care enough to see where my friends are. More to the point, I just don't see myself or many others getting on their iphone/blackberry's ect... to broadcast where they are. I understand the point is to know which places your friends prefer - but this is NY, what your friends prefer doesn't necessarily mean anything especially when it comes to a bar or club. I would bet this is a novel fad or trend that will fade.
Ultimately, I feel that there is a limit to how far you can stretch the need to be in a community. Yes, facebook might be a permanent part of life, but to be essentially tracked or constantly in need of being with others will be limited to people in their young 20's and high-schools. As the current mid-20ers "grow - up" there will be a massive drop in the use of these services until the next generations comes up. There will be a constant user base, but always changing.
Looking at the foursquare business model, the idea is essentially to get businesses to pay for better tracking information on their customers. The logic being that there should be loyalty for a customer that comes back repeatedly, almost like airline miles. Also, small businesses can advertise straight to the consumers that frequent them often. This seems to make more sense to me. Indeed, it would make more sense to me to go all the way to the end and have a program that essentially gives users a unique barcode/pin that they can use at all partnering businesses to earn loyalty points. If this is the objective, then just get straight to it. Many companies already do that in the form of frequent buyer cards at super-markets, foursquare and buzzd have just made that digital. This is where the company should focus, and drop the need to connect friends at all times of day.
1 comment:
While I absolutely agree with the above post about people's resistance on sharing their current locations, it is nevertheless interesting to see the the amount of money being invested by VCs in this space. As per my previous blog entry, it is widely agreed that there is a lot of growth potential in location based services and advertising but it is still not sure how to most effectively implement these.
Based on my research of the mobile advertising space, it is extremely important that an application encourages repeated use in order to get as many impressions as possible. While Foursquare does not incorporate any advertising to this date, its gaming aspect and the sharing of current locations definitely encourage repeated usage and therefore, could be an interesting platform going further.
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