Posts Tagged ‘FourSquare’

Going Off the Grid at SxSW

Posted on: March 9th, 2011 by Geoff Livingston 28 Comments

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Image by saidemily

Welcome to SxSW, the heart of online nihilism. Whether you are at the event or unfortunate enough to tune in via Facebook, Twitter and other social media, you will witness one of the greatest spectacles of popular pageantry. The art of seeing and being seen is taken to its highest form by the faux famous. All the more reason to indulge in the desirous luxury of going off the grid at SxSW.

Is this anti for the sake of being anti? Is it insanity given all the focus on tools like Plancast, Foursquare (3.0, and not much new), and Gowalla? No, it’s not.

Here is a list of five reasons to abstain from the all important geolocation/public network status updates at SxSW (dedicated to Jay Dolan):

1) Business: The true value of SxSW is to meet other people and network. Real business can be done at this event. That means attending parties, private events and maybe even a panel or two to talk to people eye-to-eye… As opposed to peering into a phone entering a not-so witty status update or gawking at what everyone else is doing online (instead of in front of you). Plus, it is enjoyable to get off the computer and actually talk with people. That’s the best part!

2) Listen and Observe: Given the vast amount of technology news and blogging at SxSW, there is little that another stream of updates and posts can add to the picture. However, many trends do get their start at SxSW. Watching, listening and observing allows one to research events and breaking trends as they unfold.

3) The Circle Jerk Distraction: Entourages, attitudes, leader boards, etc. are all part of the seen and be seen game, sadly much of it online via status updates. Playing this popularity game distracts you from one and two, which in turn causes you to spend a lot of money, develop a hell of a hangover, and garner no return on investment. Worse, it can bite back. The rumor mill about acts that occur fact and fiction at SxSW are astounding, and sometimes quite hurtful. Don’t feed the beast!

4) Work Beckons: ADD, the luster of the moment, the excitement of successive party after party from noon until 2 in the morning day-after-day. But there’s a job to be done back at home. There are conferences to attend next week, clients who have major deliverables due, and coming back burned out won’t make it any better.

5) Stalkers Suck: Sorry, it happens, and it is uncomfortable. Getting stalked at an event via geo check-in or status update is surreal at best, and absurd at worst… Especially given that none of us would be recognized in our hometowns at the grocery market. Maybe it’s time to get real. Oh, sorry, wrong event for that.

Does that mean complete abstinence from network updates? To each their own. It does mean abstaining from the hooplah to maintain presence for the people physically at SxSW, and mindfully observing those who await a locked-in participant back home.

What’s your game plan for SxSW?

Geoff Livingston on Google+

The Over Commercialization of GeoSocial

Posted on: December 6th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 6 Comments

radioshack.jpg

This holiday season has seen a flurry of geolocation deal posts, where people can find great offers by checking in. Foursquare even offers the Holiday Hero badge in conjunction with Radioshack, a 20% discount for mobile courage. But the deals highlight a larger problem, which is a flat (even shrinking) geosocial marketplace according to Pew Internet, with Foursquare and Gowalla showing flat usage during the second half of the year.

There are serious problems with geosocial in its current incarnation, including well discussed privacy issues, but also a boredom factor that cannot be ignored. After so many badges, the game element loses its interest. If one is not extremely open about their physical whereabouts (and older people and parents are much less likely to be open), then the geosocial experience in its current incarnation has challenges. Finally, add in the constant deal spam that seems to pop up wherever you check in now, and the experience has become a turn off.

The Britney Circus Comes to Madison Square Garden

Allyson Kapin discussed the matter in her post on nonprofit use of Foursquare and Gowalla: “My hunch is that Foursquare and Gowalla and similar services are going to need to adapt to survive. Why? Because most of the world does not really care about mapping their check-ins to let their friends know that they are grabbing coffee down the street.”

Since the beginning of the year, this commercialization — the monetization of geosocial — has been the primary development point in the two main networks. Deals are great when you are looking for them, and God news the crazy valuations that Groupon and LivingSocial received last week proved that deals have a place in social media. But deals only offers a limited use experience, and not everyone wants to be the Groupon Lady/Guy.

A balance between community interest and commercialization has been struck, and it has flattened the growth curve. While ROI has been achieved Pew shows a one point drop to 4% of total Americans accessing Foursquare and Gowalla services. The user experience isn’t compelling enough to keep momentum going.

Current geosocial users are primarily young, single people in the 18-29 age range. A powerful demographic indeed, yet Gowalla and Foursquare will need to go further if they intend to be anything more than niche mobile social networks. More needs to be done to develop a meaningful community experience that appeals to additional demographics.

Last week marked the release of Gowalla 3.0 for the iPhone, which saw cross-platform integration with Foursquare and Facebook Places. There is a new Notes feature that goes beyon public tips so users can leave short private messages for friends at specific locations. This provides a much more personal feature set that makes sharing location interesting and exciting. Bookmarks were also added for favorite locations. With more features, more personalization, and increased cross-platform functionality, this new release may be a turn towards the right direction.

Geoff Livingston on Google+

The Obvious Next Community Step – Mobile

Posted on: October 7th, 2010 by Geoff Livingston 2 Comments

Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

According to Pew Internet, forty percent of adults use the internet, email or instant messaging on a mobile phone (up from the 32% of Americans who did this in 2009). Of that group, 38% browse the web using their phones.

This trend, given the ever growing (and cheaper) smartphone marketplace, represents the greatest sea change on the social web since Facebook opened its walls to non college students. Positioning a company or nonprofit to effectively engage stakeholders on their smartphone, tablet or other portable device only makes sense. Mobility is the most obvious change that communities are making wholesale on the interwebs.

As Priya Ramesh pointed out yesterday on the Buzz Bin, mobile web access is expected to surpass desktop access by 2014. Because of the wide proliferation of platforms and, frankly, in the case of the iPhone, apps, it makes the most sense to develop your site to at minimum offer a great mobile experience. Applications can be costly, only work on singular platforms (iPhone, Android, Blackberry, etc.), and need to offer more value than simply repacked web content.

Beyond the obvious mobile web, comes mobile use and how that impacts the data and user behavior. There’s no greater example of this than the current location based social network craze with Foursquare and Gowalla taking the lead, and Facebook and Twitter trying to compete with their own offerings. However, as experts are beginning to notice, check-in programs do not offer real long term value for organizations.

The real development is in understanding how people use their phone to engage the web, and then build mobile programs that serve the customer. In some cases, that may mean delving into the location network’s database via its API and developing custom applications to serve the community.

Consider that Central Park is the most checked in place in New York City on Foursquare. Central Park supported this latent community by adding historical data for check-ins throughout the park, providing context and information to the average Foursquare/Central Park visitor’s experience. There are also mobile applications available so people can track where they are in the Park, and find attractions and locations near them.

Understanding how mobile impacts your stakeholder is the key. Whether that’s easier experiences with less input because of the device, or actual hard location based use depends on the organization. What is clear is that this is a trend that companies and nonprofits can no longer avoid.

The above is draft material for my next book, Welcome to the Fifth Estate (the follow up to Now Is Gone, which is almost out of print). Comments may be used in the final edition. You can download the first drafted chapter of the new edition — Welcome to the Fifth Estate — for free.

Geoff Livingston on Google+