Time for “Check In” Rehab?
Are you on the (geo)fence observing the latest hype that has the early adopting urban geeksters zombified or are you in locomotion right along with them?
GeoLocation-Based Services, Media, Games…. They are buzzing this year.
We mainly hear about Gowalla, Foursquare, Yelp and Loopt as leading the pack of dozens of other similar services/apps floating around. I’m not really interested in talking about what they are exactly…. I mean…. they are social networks. Some are persistent and some are disposable. But they all are GeoAware at the core. The idea is to reward people for going to places (check ins) and to observe the activity of other people so that you can meet-up IRL or passively socialize or benefit from reviews and tips. Shit like that. Most include obvious gaming mechanics to make it more fun and so that an incentive platform exists for businesses to tap into. You get points, badges, rewards which translates to special offers based on your achievements. Ok, I said I didn’t want to define them here but there you go…. that’s at least the gist of what most are doing today.
As a user, I initially pointed out that these services were not interesting to me and did’nt provide enough fun to keep me engaged. Granted, I work from home about an hour north of NYC so I’m not the target audience. But when I am in the city or out and about… I’ve found the imperfections in these services to cause the necessary simplicity to be lacking. For instance, I am at a place but the GeoDetection thinks I am a few hundered meters away and cannot check in…. or I can check in manually but might need to create the place first. And then once I do check in, I get my points/badges but am left with wondering why I just bothered. Granted, it’s very dependent on the place in order to have good metadata and user activity/input to view… And many of these services just don’t have a large userbase, especially outside of big cities. I get that… Like I said, its targeted towards the early adopting urban geeksters. That includes your everday teens and twenty-somthings as well as older tech-minded conference-attending social-media folk. So where’s this going? Here’s what Silicon Valley Insider Dave McClure thinks:
Without financial incentives or discounts, there is absolutely no reason on god’s green earth to “check-in” for your stoner cousin, your luddite penny-pinching aunt, and certainly not your clueless grandmother. they could give a rat’s ass about your stupid little iPhone app with the pretty pictures and clever auto-discovery that barely works while draining the hell out of the battery… that is, until you give them $5 off their next beer or 5-dollar foot long…. at which point guess what?
HELLO, MAINSTREAM CONSUMER MARKET!
via http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/04/checkins-are-coupons.html
Sure, we can rocket launch the core issue of sustainability and monetizable questions and stack it up against the Mega Corporations. Let’s face it, today it’s not easy being the next big thing when so many markets are being covered by just a few monster companies… and ultimately, you get bought out or burned out. So are these LBS’s paving the way for Facebook and Twitter and Google and Apple to get in and do Location right or do they have the right kind of momentum behind them now, making deals on Main St. and connecting with users in fresh new ways that maybe the big guys don’t know how to do anymore with their spunk-diluted feature-bloated services?
Whatev.
We can speculate all day. But let’s bring it down a notch. Fuck Location Wars. Yeah I know, Foursquare and Co get assimilated and/or die. Location features are commodities anyway. It will all be pervasive. Everything from web pages you’re on to email messages you send to the places you walk by or shop at or eat at…. “Share Location?” “Save this choice?” 
I suppose I’m getting into Ubiquitous Computing and Context-Aware Pervasive Systems, GeoFencing and so on. But their is absolutely no denying the fact that things are heading this way…. Location is such a core component of the future of our connected culture. Pervasive! And it’s not so boring to think about once you get past the cute little check in apps with delightful badges and the ability to be considered a Mayor of a place. Booyah!
Personally, I have been having fun researching GeoLocation Technology and how I can apply it to my own ideas in gaming and the socialsphere. Even if I personally wouldnt play a game I conjure up…. it’s great fun to scheme and so many new services with friendly developer APIs make building prototypes feasible and inviting innovation. So as a creative developer, I have to admit that I am sold and want to play in this sandbox. I suppose a more realistic discussion on Location Wars is not to consider what the Behemoths are going to do but instead to look at what Zynga is doing and the success of casual social games like Farmville that leverage FaceBook, Twitter etc to reach the largest audiences.
My point is, their are a lot of opportunities in Location-Based Services that blend gaming, marketing, socializing and consumerism. And their will not be any exclusivity among businesses… platforms will/do exist to integrate “offers” into your service/app/game just like any other advertisement.
To end this rant…. Yeah, “Check In” has been at the heart of the hype. But soon, you’ll be able to “Check Out” a lot more!
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papyromancer 11:54 AM on April 13, 2010 Permalink |
I’ve found that Google Buzz is the best geolocative service of the bunch. You get long and short posts from people near your location without any of the gameness of foursquare. It’s a great way to meet the locals because it’s just like overhearing them chatting a coffee shop or the like, butting into the conversation is encouraged.
BTW… to access this great feature, you have to use the mobile site. And I haven’t figured out how to access that from a standard browser without some user agent fu.