Foursquare Radar
Foursquare: The real world, now in real-time! Say hi to Foursquare Radar; http://eicker.at/FoursquareRadar
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Gerrit Eicker
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Gerrit Eicker
Gowalla: Social City Travel Guide
Gowalla evolves to a social city travel guide: check-ins as a commodity, storytelling at heart; http://eicker.at/Gowalla
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Gerrit Eicker
ATD: “Gowalla, long-time rival to Foursquare, today announced a new direction for its social location service. The Austin, Texas-based company will attempt to offer a hybrid between a social app and a content guide, focused around local experiences. – Instead of checking in, Gowalla users will now create ‘stories’ when they meet up to hang out together. These are basically group check-ins, as on Facebook where a user can tag multiple friends at a place. After that, any tagged person can contribute photos and other content to the story, capturing it as a communal experience.”
VB: “Check-ins are a bit more of a transactional model, we wanted something that was faster and more connected and saved that memory in a way that I could share with my friends,” Gowalla founder and chief executive Josh Williams (pictured) said. “Our goal is to inspire people to get out.”
GigaOM: “Gowalla, like many other check-in services, has had trouble keeping pace with Foursquare. But the location startup is relaunching its service with an eye toward becoming more of a city travel guide, downplaying the role of check-ins in favor of discovery, travel and storytelling. – The relaunch is an important step for Gowalla, which needs to find a better way to differentiate itself. It had tried to emphasize games early on with virtual goods called items, which could be collected and traded. But it announced last month that it was ending the use of items and was refocusing on its core mission of encouraging people to go out and explore the world.”
Gowalla: “[W]e will be removing Items completely with the next release of Gowalla. While they have been a trademark feature of Gowalla since the beginning – one that our entire team poured much effort and passion into – fewer than half a percent of our active community makes use of them. It now causes more distraction than joy for the vast majority of our community.”
TC: “So will this small pivot work for Gowalla? Well, they’re certainly focusing on the right areas. Check-ins are now a commodity, the real value of location lies in both augmenting personal experiences and providing useful information. Gowalla is trying to find the sweet spot between both. They’re a mobile travel guide and a well-conceived location-based sharing tool. … You can also share all of this data to Facebook and Twitter – and yes, you can still check-in through Gowalla and send it to Foursquare. – The travel aspect is potentially even bigger. While there are a lot of people going after this problem, no one has nailed the mobile travel guide so far. When someone does, it’s going to be massive. Gowalla has a pretty decent shot of doing something unique here because of all the data they’ve been collecting over time.“
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Gerrit Eicker
Google Acquires Zagat
Zagat got googled: Google acquires Zagat Survey, restaurant ratings and reviews since 1979; http://eicker.at/GoogleZagat
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Gerrit Eicker
Nina and Tim Zagat: “Zagat got googled – We are writing to share the most exciting news in our 32 years in business. Zagat Survey has been acquired by another great company, Google. – From the beginning, Zagat Survey has empowered people by providing a vehicle for them to express their opinions. After spending time with Google senior management discussing our mutual goals, we know they share our belief in user-generated content and our commitment to accuracy and fairness in providing users with the information needed to make smart decisions about where to eat, shop and travel. – It is a testament to the knowledgeable consumers who contribute their opinions that Zagat Survey has become an internationally respected symbol of quality. Their experiences, distilled into numerical ratings and concise, witty, quote-filled reviews, will continue to provide accurate guidance for a wide range of leisure activities.”
Google, Mayer: “I’m thrilled that Google has acquired Zagat. Moving forward, Zagat will be a cornerstone of our local offering – delighting people with their impressive array of reviews, ratings and insights, while enabling people everywhere to find extraordinary (and ordinary) experiences around the corner and around the world. – With Zagat, we gain a world-class team that has more experience in consumer based-surveys, recommendations and reviews than anyone else in the industry. …I’m incredibly excited to collaborate with Zagat to bring the power of Google search and Google Maps to their products and users, and to bring their innovation, trusted reputation and wealth of experience to our users.”
pC: “Google … is expanding its push into local content with its acquisition of Zagat, which started out as a New York City restaurant guide in 1979 and now publishes guides in 13 categories and over 100 cities. It’s good news for Zagat, which unsuccessfully put itself up for sale in January 2008, pulling itself off the market six months later when there were no buyers. … Zagat has tried to develop its mobile business. Its app, which costs $9.99 per year, was one of the founding iPad apps. The company announced a partnership with Foursquare for a ‘foodie’ badge in 2010 and also partnered with Foodspotting to use that company’s data and photos. … In the past, Google has resisted the characterization of itself as a content company, but this is a major push into local content for sure.”
SEL: “This is huge news for Google (capital ‘H’) and for local. Google is a content publisher now and the content that Zagat brings arguably closes the gap between Google Places and Yelp. We’ll have to see the implementation. … Beyond restaurants, Zagat also offers ratings and revenues of entertainment venues, wine and travel. The online version of the site has developed a community as well; so there’s a social networking dimension to this acquisition as well as content that Google is buying. … I spoke with Google’s Marissa Mayer and Tim Zagat. They told me that nothing would change in the near term; Google will continue to publish the guides and maintain the subscription product. I asked if Zagat reviews would be imported into Google Places and Google’s response was non-committal. Of course they will; that’s the point of this transaction: the content.”
RWW: “The Google local apps are still relatively barebones compared to dedicated competitors like Yelp and Foursquare. Even recent additions to Google’s dominant Maps tools haven’t made it to mobile yet. But this acquisition, along with Google’s purchase of The Dealmap last month, reveal Google’s hand in the local recommendations game, and it looks like a flush.”
VB: “The move is a major blow to user-generated reviews website Yelp, which competes with Google Places and Zagat. Google failed to acquire Yelp back in late 2009, with Yelp reportedly walking away from a $550 million deal. Google further distanced itself from Yelp when it removed Yelp’s reviews from Google Places in mid-2010.”
TNW: “I see this as a much more powerful play than just local offerings. This, combined with Google’s purchase of ITA and its hotel reviews puts the company firmly into the travel business, with more offerings than almost anyone else in the business.”
Lowe: “All of the restaurant reviews on Yelp could fill 16,894 Zagat guides, and only 26% of businesses reviewed on Yelp are restaurants. Congrats?“
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Gerrit Eicker
LBS Adoption
Pew: 28% of all American adults use mobile or social location-based services of some kind; http://eicker.at/LBSAdoption
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Gerrit Eicker
Pew: “28% of cell owners use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location – that works out to 23% of all adults. A much smaller number (5% of cell owners, equaling 4% of all adults) use their phones to check in to locations using geosocial services such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Smartphone owners are especially likely to use these services on their phones. 9% of internet users set up social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn so that their location is automatically included in their posts on those services. That works out to 7% of all adults. – Taken together, 28% of U.S. adults do at least one of these activities either on a computer or using their mobile phones – and many users do several of them.”
Pew: “Smartphone owners – One in ten smartphone owners (12%) have used a geosocial (‘check in’) service such as Foursquare or Gowalla, and 55% of smartphone owners have used a location-based information service. Almost six in ten smartphone owners (58%) use at least one of these services. These are all well above the average for cell owners as a whole. – Younger users – Smartphone owners ages 18-49 are more likely than those over 50 to use either geosocial or location-based services on their phones. (There are no significant differences among social media users by age in regard to automatic location-tagging.)”
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Places: Where We Go
Facebook adds time to location sharing: Where we are, where we go, and where we’ve been; http://eicker.at/WhereWeGo
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Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “Add where you are to anything you share – In the past, you needed a smart phone to easily share your location. Now you can share your location from your computer, too, and say: Where you’ve been. Remember where you were in your favourite photos. Where you are now. If friends are nearby, they might just meet you there. Where you’re going. Friends who have been there can give you tips or even join in the plan.”
TC: “It was almost exactly one year ago that Facebook launched Places, their location-based offering. … Fast forward to today: Foursquare recently raised a large round of funding valuing them at $600 million. And Facebook is killing off Places. – To be clear, Facebook is not ducking out of the location game itself. In fact, you could say that they’re doubling-down on it. But they are moving away from the game that the ‘check-in’ services have been playing. And a result of that is Places being killed off and being replaced by new ‘Nearby’ area… This is smart, as it’s something none of the other location services have really nailed yet. And now that location is being emphasized on every Facebook action (though it can easily be turned off) – and not just on mobile…”
IF: “Facebook will remove the Places check-in feed from its mobile apps and interface, a company spokesperson confirms with us. Rather than check-in, users will be able to add their city-level location or tag a specific Place in any post. … When users post content from the web, mobile site, or smartphone apps, they’ll have the option to tag a Place, whether they’re there currently or just want to mention it. As TechCrunch illustrates, Facebook’s foot-traffic incentivizing Check-in Deals will still be available, with users seeing the option to redeem them appended to the news feed story of their mention of a location.”
Gerrit Eicker
Software
Andreessen: Software is eating the world – virtually and in the physical world; http://eicker.at/Software
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Gerrit Eicker
Andreessen: “This week, Hewlett-Packard (where I am on the board) announced that it is exploring jettisoning its struggling PC business in favor of investing more heavily in software, where it sees better potential for growth. Meanwhile, Google plans to buy up the cellphone handset maker Motorola Mobility. Both moves surprised the tech world. But both moves are also in line with a trend I’ve observed, one that makes me optimistic about the future growth of the American and world economies, despite the recent turmoil in the stock market. – In short, software is eating the world. … Why is this happening now? … Over two billion people now use the broadband Internet, up from perhaps 50 million a decade ago, when I was at Netscape, the company I co-founded. In the next 10 years, I expect at least five billion people worldwide to own smartphones, giving every individual with such a phone instant access to the full power of the Internet, every moment of every day. … Software is also eating much of the value chain of industries that are widely viewed as primarily existing in the physical world. … Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming. This includes even industries that are software-based today. … Instead of constantly questioning their valuations, let’s seek to understand how the new generation of technology companies are doing what they do, what the broader consequences are for businesses and the economy and what we can collectively do to expand the number of innovative new software companies created in the U.S. and around the world.”
Gerrit Eicker
Gamification
Meaningful Play, getting gamification right with: meaning, mastery, autonomy; http://eicker.at/Gamification @dingstweets
Gerrit Eicker
Check-in Value!?
Check-in services need to find a way to deliver deep value to people beyond the check-in; http://eicker.at/CheckinValue
Gerrit Eicker
Adoption of Online Marketing Services
Local businesses: the adoption of online marketing services; http://eicker.at/2d Chart: http://eicker.at/2e (via @SocialTimes)
Gerrit Eicker
Social Consumers and Advertising
Social games, brand and direct response advertising, real-time, fun in eCommerce, user retention; http://eicker.at/Consumer2011
Gerrit Eicker 07:31 on 14. October 2011 Permalink |
Foursquare: “The initial vision for foursquare centered around one question: can we build something to help make the world easier to use. Until now, we’ve focused around sharing what you’re doing and building expertise, with features like checking in, tips and recommendations. Today, we’re super excited by what some of iOS 5’s newest features allow us to do. Specifically, say hi to foursquare’s ‘Radar,’ a huge step in the evolution of the foursquare vision.”
RWW: “The release of Radar comes on the heels of Foursquare’s second hackathon, held at the end of September. Paris-based Web developer Benjamin Netter took home the top prize for his Web app Plan My Next Trip, which uses your Foursquare history to recommend things to do when visiting other cities. Radar follows-up on the very Foursquare fun-focused trend of helping consumers find new places to visit, particularly in densely-populated urban centers.”
GigaOM: “Radar is an interesting extension of Foursquare’s lists feature, which made its debut in August. Now that the app knows about places a user hopes to visit, vs only knowing about places she’s visited in the past, a feature like Radar can be useful instead of annoying. In all, it seems like a smart evolution for Foursquare, which has been on a growth and R&D tear since it secured $50 million in new venture capital in June.“