LBS Adoption
Pew: 28% of all American adults use mobile or social location-based services of some kind; http://eicker.at/LBSAdoption
Tagged: Location Sharing Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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
-
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
Skype Acquires GroupMe
Skype acquires group messaging service GroupMe, to help users stay in touch and make decisions; http://eicker.at/SkypeGroupMe
-
Gerrit Eicker
Skype: “I’m delighted to announce we’re acquiring GroupMe, a provider of mobile group messaging services that helps users stay in touch and make decisions. – This acquisition is another step towards our vision to provide a global multi-modal and multi-platform communications experience. It complements our existing leadership in voice and video communications by providing best in class mobile text-based communications and innovative features around group messaging that enable users to connect, share locations and photos and make plans with their closest ties.”
GroupMe: “Today, we have entered into an agreement to be acquired by Skype. Over the last few months, we had been in talks with Skype that started with discussions about potential commercial partnerships. As we got to know the core Skype team better, though, and as our conversations evolved, it quickly became evident that our visions were perfectly aligned. Both companies are focused on changing the way the world communicates, and helping people stay in touch with the people they really know. With a shared vision – an ambitious one – we decided our efforts to own real-time communications and the real life network could be best executed as one company.”
VB: “Both Facebook and Google recently released their own offerings targeted at group messaging with Facebook Messenger and Google+’s Huddle. Skype’s decision to buy GroupMe shows it wants to make sure it also has its group communication bases covered. It should pair well with the services it already offers, including video calling, global calling, instant messaging, and text messaging services. – Skype is still in the process of being acquired by Microsoft. The big M said in May that it would buy Skype for $8.5 billion and as soon as the deal is completed, we will likely see Skype integrated into Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone and Office 365. GroupMe’s application and technology would also help Microsoft flesh out its mobile offerings as it continues to expand Windows Phone 7’s presence and capabilities.”
pC: “Far from being a messaging service aimed only at enterprises (like Yammer, for example), GroupMe has been making some strides into the consumer market by linking up with brands and events to increase its profile and relevance there as well: earlier this year it announced that the music event Lollapalooza and the TV show Dexter would both be using GroupMe’s APIs in their apps for their respective audiences to add more social features and to connect with each other via those platforms.”
GigaOM: “Skype so far has been reliant on its instant messaging and voice (and video) call offerings to engage its hundreds of millions of users. However, the mobile phone changes that behavior – shifting the focus to more instantaneous services such a GroupMe in addition to a combination of other communication mediums – SMS, mobile phone, Beluga, Twitter and Facebook Messages in addition to email. – Skype, which has been one of the earliest beneficiaries of the iPhone boom, has seen lightweight group messaging clients like GroupMe gaining in popularity and it is right to be worried. … The fact remains that the sands of time were against GroupMe. The oncoming competition from Facebook Messenger, Google’s Huddle and most importantly Apple’s iMessage were going to fundamentally increase the pressure on GroupMe, which in turn decided that it was better to find comfort in the arms of a much larger company. … From a long-term perspective, Skype as an entity is going to have an identity crisis. It cannot figure out whether it wants to be a friend to the consumers or whether it wants to be a corporation- focused collaboration company.“
Gerrit Eicker
Gamification Research Network
Game design elements in non-gaming contexts: great gamification introductory papers for CHI 2011; http://eicker.at/GRN
Gerrit Eicker
Google Hotpot
Google adds Hotpot to Google Places: a local recommendation engine personalising local search; http://eicker.at/GoogleHotpot
Gerrit Eicker
A World of Tweets
Real-time visualisation of geolocated tweets around the world: a world of tweets; http://eicker.at/WorldTweets (via @jseibert)
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Places Deutschland
Facebook Places startet in Deutschland: Werden Check-in-Dienste jetzt massentauglich? http://j.mp/dwDMPq
-
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “Orte ist eine Facebook-Funktion, mit der du sehen kannst, wo deine Freunde sind, und mit der du anderen deinen physischen Aufenthaltsort mitteilen kannst. Wenn du Orte verwendest, kannst du sehen, ob sich deine Freunde gerade in der Nähe befinden und dann einfach Kontakt mit ihnen aufnehmen. … Du kontrollierst und besitzt alle Informationen, die du auf Facebook teilst, einschließlich der Informationen in der Orte-Anwendung. Du bestimmst, wie und mit wem du diese teilst. Dein Aufenthaltsort wird niemals automatisch mitgeteilt: Und zwar weder beim Verwenden deines Handys noch beim Verwenden der Facebook-Anwendung und auch nicht, wenn du die Orte-Funktion verwendest. Dein Aufenthaltsort wird nur dann mitgeteilt, wenn du diesen in der Orte-Anwendung angibst. Ob und mit wem du teilst, wo du dich befindest, ist deine Entscheidung.”
FAZ: “Facebook-Nutzer können ihren Freunden künftig nicht nur mitteilen, was sie gerade tun, sondern auch wo sie sind. Der Dienst Places, der in Deutschland Facebook-Orte heißt, ermöglicht nun auch den deutschen Nutzern das Einchecken an Orten. Der neue Dienst ortet dabei den Nutzer über Satellitennavigation (GPS). Per ‘Check In’ können die rund 12 Millionen aktiven Nutzer in Deutschland dann ihren aktuellen Aufenthaltsort aus einer Vorschlagsliste umliegender öffentlicher Plätze wie Restaurants oder Geschäfte auswählen oder einen neuen Platz anlegen. Auf diese Weise können Nutzer erfahren, welche Freunde gerade ebenfalls dort sind, oder sie können Kommentare hinterlassen, die vielleicht für spätere Besucher hilfreich sein können. … Der Ortsdienst funktioniert nur, wenn die Nutzer dies ausdrücklich in ihrem Profil einstellen. Die Ortsangaben werden dann nur den Freunden mitgeteilt. Wer von einem anderem Facebook-Nutzer mit eingecheckt werden kann, muss vorher zustimmen. Problematisch ist allerdings die Möglichkeit, auch nicht-öffentliche Plätze anzulegen. Wenn genügend Menschen sich zum Beispiel auf einer Party anmelden, erscheint der Ort als öffentlicher Platz.”
Heise: “Da Facebook aber die Möglichkeit bietet, dass Dritte auch den Aufenthaltsort eines anderen Nutzers preisgeben, sollte man auf derselben Seite ‘Freunde können angeben, dass ich mich an einem Ort befinde’ auf ‘Gesperrt’ setzen. Ein dritter Punkt findet sich auf der Seite ‘Anwendungen, Spiele und Webseiten’. Dort gilt es, unter ‘Informationen, die durch deine Freunde zugänglich sind’, das Häkchen vor ‘Orte, die ich besuche’, zu entfernen. Sonst könnten die Anwendungen von Freunden auf die Ortsinformationen zugreifen.”
NW: “Jeder Ort besitzt eine eigene Profilseite. Einzelhändler, Gastronomen und andere physische Einrichtungen können eine von Nutzern angelegte Orte-Profilseite beanspruchen. Nach einer Verifizierung erhalten sie die Möglichkeit, ihre bestehende Facebook Page mit der Orts-Profilseite zu vereinen. … Betroffen von Facebook-Orte sind unter anderem hiesige Check-In-Services wie friendticker und Qype. Im August erklärte uns friendticker-CEO Florian Resatsch, dass das Berliner Startup Facebook-Orte über die von dem Social Network angebotene API integrieren wolle, sobald es in Deutschland verfügbar sei. – Facebook-Orte ist der bisher bedeutendste Vorstoß eines Webangebots in den primär von jungen, nur bedingt einflussreichen Startups dominierten Markt der ortsabsierten Dienste.“
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook Places: Where We Are
Facebook Places introduces the masses to location-based sharing: Who, What, When, and Now… Where; http://j.mp/c32fU0
-
Gerrit Eicker
Facebook: “Starting today, you can immediately tell people about that favorite spot with Facebook Places. You can share where you are and the friends you’re with in real time from your mobile device. … To get started, you’ll need the most recent version of the Facebook application for iPhone. You also can access Places from touch.facebook.com if your mobile browser supports HTML 5 and geolocation. … With Places, you are in control of what you share and the people you share with. You choose whether or not to share your location when you check in at a place. When you check in, you can tag friends who are with you but only if their settings allow it. When you are tagged, you are always notified.”
TC: “‘There was so much to do before we launched this,’ Zuckerberg said with a smile on his face. He said that what they’re focusing on at launch is a solid core. The three main things they’re focusing on is helping people share where they are, helping people see who is around them, and helping people seeing what’s going on. The basics. – When asked about checking-in to watching television shows or the like, Zuckerberg joked, ‘there’s a lot of stuff we’re not doing.'”
RWW: “Facebook may be moving fast, but Zuckerberg and co. are being careful to ease their 500 million users in – making nice with location pioneers Gowalla and Foursquare; emphasizing user benefits, not marketing possibilities; and sharing gooey anecdotes about how Facebook Places creates a living history of the world. … The new Facebook Places is ‘opt-in,’ which in this case means Facebook assumes you want to be part of Places and share your location information with your friends, but not necessarily the whole Internet (we’re working on a ‘How to disable Facebook Places’ post now for those who aren’t ready for the location revolution). … Facebook has introduced this feature in a compelling way to mainstream users who are learning and loving the social web, and it seems destined to be a raging hit. A lot of attractive possibilities open up when users share location data.”
O’Reilly: “Martin May, a founder of location check-in service Brightkite, summed it up with a tweet, ‘So far, FB Places is pretty much ‘been there, done that’…of course at FB size‘. The key feature of Facebook Places is the number of users that are suddenly impacted. Tens of millions of people across the US will now be able to share their location with their friends for the time ever (of course they could have always joined one of the existing services, but they didn’t). Facebook Places in many ways just validated the location check-in space while at the same time they owned it. As Dennis Crowley, the Foursquare founder, has said (and many others) check-in data is a commodity. The value will come in the reviews, ratings and other data that they are able to glean from their users’ behaviors.”
Guardian: “Facebook knows that, and the only thing that matters about adding location data to Facebook profiles is how secure and uncomplicated the privacy settings are. One person’s ‘granularity’ is another person’s ‘complicated’, and Facebook had better hope users can turn privacy up to 11. – I’d argue that of all the features Facebook has launched, and every momentary backlash, this is by far the biggest opportunity for a serious balls up. That’s down to Facebook’s scale of half a billion people, the public’s discomfort with the commercial uses of their data (at least for those who care to think about it) and the uniquely risky implications of location services that go wrong. – If they get it right, on the other hand, it could finally deliver the promise of location-based-services to the mainstream. In technology at least, that’s big news.“
Gerrit Eicker 07:40 on 7. September 2011 Permalink |
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.)”