This week the MZ blog has been hijacked by the Planning department, and true to form we’re kicking off with a stat: Morgan Stanley recently showed that by 2015 we’ll probably be accessing the Web using our phones more commonly than our computers. Which means that over the next five years we’ll increasingly be accessing information on the go.
This ‘mobile movement’ is already building up a good head of steam. The last 18 months have seen geolocation social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla take off, particularly the former who recently passed 100million check-ins since launch. These are social games, so to speak, that give you points and rewards for ‘checking in’ to different locations you visit, allowing you to leave recommendations for a venue/shop/restaurant that can be seen by others when they check in to the same location.
These tools have got the early adopters talking, with both experiencing notable growth following SXSW in March. And unsurprisingly some big brands have also decided to trial these platforms as marketing tools, most notably Starbucks who are offering the person with the most store check-ins $1 off their coffee every time they stop by, and Diesel who offered Foursquare users who checked in close to their New York outlet a free t-shirt if they came in to the store. Both campaigns returned mixed results, especially in Diesel’s case where the offer only ran for one day.
With the average geolocation social network user being 18-35 and male, both these brands have good cause to trial these platforms. And we can garner some simple learnings from their experiences: geolocation communications need to be quick to grasp, seeing as they’re being accessed on the go; and should run over a considerable time frame. Just because people are being exposed to location-relevant content, doesn’t mean they have the time to go out of their way to take advantage of an offer – as was the case with Diesel’s one-day-only deal. As with other social media strategies, these offers take time to spread to the relevant audience.
In terms of geolocation social networks becoming mainstream, the recent announcement that Google will no longer continue to support Google Wave shows that drawing the early adopter crowd isn’t enough to carry a technology into the mainstream. Google Wave failed due to its inability to demonstrate how it can easily help people improve what they already do. And if geolocation social networks like Foursquare don’t quickly provide their users with better rewards for interaction, we may see a similar decline.
Ultimately, the full effect of location-based social networking may not be seen until the behemoth that is Facebook decides to enter the landscape. 40% of the time that users spend on Facebook is already via mobile devices, so the integration of location-based elements into their social network is likely to be the tipping point for the masses to interact with each other and brands based on their location – and Ronald McDonald seems to agree with me.
Nick Davies is going places
Unless these points mean prizes, erm what’s the point?! I’m all for receiving offers, discounts and attending happy hours on impulse. But wading through “coupons” really isn’t a natural shoppers style, it’ll just send them off track. Won’t this create shopping hysteria, sales style, which most rational beings will avoid at all costs!
Still waiting to see the “killer-app” in this space, if it ever comes. For my money, the real value’s in the location-based services like Yelp, AroundMe, Layar etc. rather than the location-based networking like Foursquare, Loopt and Gowalla are hanging their hat on.
Twitter and Facebook have both made moves toward location-aware updates that, given their pre-established user-bases, will blow Foursquare out of the water. 100 million users worldwide is still essentially just the bleeding-edge early-adopting hipsters.
I agree, Foursquare user numbers are actually unknown, so that 100 million is just check-ins. Foursquare has under 2 million active users it turns out (though they aren’t keen to publicise this).
http://techcrunch.com/2010/07/07/foursquare-gowalla-stats/
It will be interesting if technology such as Layer can incorporate marketing initiatives into the mobile world in a similar way it has information such as wikipedia articles and tweets.
I don’t mind if Starbucks or MacDonalds track my movements, but what if the government gets hold of this kind of data?
If the government continue to embrace open data then you might find they like the idea of tracking your movements, however Simon, your concerns might be better placed towards your common man.
Apps have been created that indicate when you are out; and therefore if your house is empty and ready to be robbed:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/7266120/Please-Rob-Me-website-tells-burglars-when-Twitter-users-are-not-home.html
As well as this, being approached by strangers who know far more than they should about you may become a more common occurance, as digital cyber-stalking appears to be on the rise:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jul/23/foursquare
Scary stuff?
OK, but I think you could actually use this technology to help the less “common (wo)man”. So when I need to find a pair of pink converse booties in my niece’s size I don’t have to trawl the stockists websites or pop into every shoe shop I pass, pay a delivery charge for my last minuteness and not be able to wrap them up with a pink bow etc etc
The whole idea of tracking your location and then logging where you’ve been (for other people’s convenience or your own kicks) is a step too far in my mind. I don’t mind contributing to various review sites of locations or adding a restaurant review to Google but generally I’d rather my exact location wasn’t tracked by anyone or anything, even my beloved HTC (unless I get kidnapped, then obviously please do use my GPS to find me).
Isn’t this just another step into social networking self importance with no regard for personal privacy?! I don’t think any benefit outweighs this issue for me, no matter how techie they make it.
Tracking location is already fairly possible, through mundane tech – e.g. facial/numberplate recognition from the ironically entitled NICE and our digital CCTV network means that should the govt choose to invest huge resource, they could do this without any material breach to privacy laws.
The increasing digitalisation of our world means we leave digital footprints everywhere – credit cards, ID checks, whatever. But for now, the data is still too raw, and our computing power too weak to do much with it.
Conspiracy theorists will be reassured to know that the police still can’t even build a unified national database of criminals. So forget them doing clever things with surveilence data. But there’s an event horizon approaching that we do need to be aware of and there is a responsibility for all of us to be aware of, join and influence the perceived consensus on what is the acceptable balance between liberty and security, between controls and freedom – between the beauty of chaos and the dehumanising influence of order.
There isn’t a right answer, but there are the right questions to ask.