We love Pete Cashmore’s insight into the future landscape of social media.

Next year’s Twitter? It’s Foursquare

By Pete Cashmore, Special to CNN, November 19, 2009 1:18 p.m. EST

Editor’s note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.

London, England (CNN) — As 2009 draws to a close, with Twitter undoubtedly this year’s media darling and Facebook continuing on its path to global domination, you may wonder which social-media service will become tech’s poster boy in 2010.

Among the Web’s early adopter set, the answer is nearly unanimous: Foursquare.

While the technology landscape is ever-changing, I’d argue that Foursquare already has aligned itself to become next year’s mainstream hit.

The Twitter connection

Birthed by the team that brought us the mobile social network Dodgeball (acquired by Google in 2005 and later shuttered), the location-based mobile startup serves a simple purpose: It lets an individual share his or her location with a group of friends.

Foursquare ventures beyond utility, however: It’s a virtual game in which participants earn badges for checking in at various locations; those that check in most become a venue’s “mayor.” By all accounts, this mechanism is as addictive as Twitter, Facebook or checking your e-mail on a BlackBerry.

Originally launched as an iPhone application and seeded by the young early-adopter set in cities such as New York and San Francisco, the site’s founders were able to leap from a ready-made springboard: Twitter.

With users’ “check-ins” being posted to the messaging service, Foursquare was able to gain a foothold in much the same way YouTube built its lead from videos embedded in MySpace pages.

The parallels with Twitter are numerous. As technology early adopter and popular blogger Robert Scoble wrote in September: “Go back three years ago. Twitter was being used by the same crowd that is playing with Foursquare today.”

The similarities don’t stop there: Twitter first took hold at Austin’s South By Southwest festival in 2007; Foursquare made its debut at SXSW 2009. Members of both founding teams have previously built successful social startups; both those startups were sold to Google.

The two companies share investors, too: Union Square Ventures is a backer, while Twitter inventor Jack Dorsey made an angel investment in Foursquare. Other notable investors include the founders of Digg and Delicious, and famed angel investor Ron Conway. Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson observed that Foursquare’s first round financing was “among the most competitive early round financings I’ve seen in a long time.”

Foursquare’s power play: Platform for developers, retailers

This week Foursquare debuted the singular piece that launched Twitter into the stratosphere: an API. This application programming interface allows third-party developers to build anything they desire on top of Foursquare’s location-based social network.

It’s been shown time and again that once these ecosystems gain momentum, potential competitors face an arduous task. From Flickr to Google Maps to Twitter and beyond, it’s clear that early critical mass — having enough users and applications to make a service invaluable — sets the stage for a landslide victory.

Google’s Android, entering the mobile platform wars long after the iPhone App Store had served up a veritable smorgasbord of apps to its army of users, is evidence of the chicken-and-egg problem that arises for new competitors: What’s the incentive for users and developers to switch to a smaller, less visible platform once a leader has emerged?

With the launch of its API, Foursquare looks set to capitalize on this “rich get richer” phenomenon before others can make a play. Foursquare is doing more than wooing users and developers, however: It’s also courting local bars and restaurants.

“Foursquare for Businesses” is a platform for retailers wishing to offer special deals to Foursquare users: Check in to frozen desert maker Tasti D-Lite at two venues in New York, for instance, and you’re eligible for a discount.

Competitors abound

Nonetheless, multiple players are vying for victory in the location-based services market. Between Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite and Google’s Latitude, Foursquare will by no means have an easy ride. While Gowalla debuted an early version at SXSW 2009 alongside Foursquare, both Loopt and Brightkite have a head start.

All of these services, I’d argue, lack the highly addictive game play that appears to have Foursquare users hooked.

Google is undoubtedly the 800-pound gorilla, but the fastidiously numbers-driven search engine has proven time and again that it cannot grasp social-networking dynamics — from Orkut to Friend Connect (its Facebook Connect competitor) to its failure to turn Google Video into a YouTube competitor.

One company may unwittingly squash Foursquare in its infancy: Twitter itself. The very service that propelled Foursquare to prominence is rapidly building out its location-based features, with a location API that directly challenges Foursquare. Twitter already has the critical mass of users and ecosystem of eager developers. If it executes correctly, the service could leave Foursquare in the dust.

In Foursquare’s favor: Young, fast-growing startups such as Twitter often find their engineering teams overstretched simply trying to achieve scale. Twitter has added less than a dozen new features since launch as preventing frequent downtime has become its greatest challenge.

Meanwhile, the overlap in investors means the Twitter-Foursquare relationship is unlikely to turn sour. Foursquare may network its way to the top in 2010 or find itself lost in an increasingly competitive landscape. Early adopters are betting on the former.

Loopt.com is taking social-networking to a whole new level. According to Loopt.com, Loopt shows users where friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. “Loopt helps friends connect to each other and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events. Users can also share location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs.”

Loopt states that it was designed with user privacy at its core and “offers a variety of effective and intuitive privacy controls.” But I have to wonder, if a program is devised to essentially track your every movement, how is this protecting your privacy exactly?

The company was launched In the Spring of 2005 by Sam Altman, a sophomore computer science major at Stanford, and two of his friends Nick Sivo and Alok Deshpande. All three now serve as three executives of the company which has grew to over 50 employees after they received an offer of $5 million from Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates, two of the premier venture capital firms in the world, and the investors behind Google, Yahoo!, PayPal, Tivo, and many other prominent technology businesses.

The company is definitely growing and releasing new prototypes. News was released today that Loopt 2.0 was released for the for iPhone and iPod touch. Loopt got a significant redesign in 2.0, placing more of an emphasis on places, events, and the “pulse” of what’s going on around you. The new version adds information from Zagat and Citysearch, two popular Web services obsessed with location, to display things like businesses, upcoming events, and coffee shops within a walk or short drive. You can easily get a phone number, Web link, description, and directions for most restaurants and businesses, as well as view ratings and other Loopt users who liked a particular spot.

Loopt let me know that they have just released a major update for their BlackBerry client that adds a bunch of new features. Loopt mobile updates your location in real-time while it runs in the background so you can meet up with nearby friends, explore new places to grab food, and find local events wherever you are. Here are some of the features:
• Discover the best places and events, including those rated highly by your friends on Pulse
• See where your friends are on maps – view their latest updates listed in real-time and comment on them
• Check-in to instantly share your updates with friends – easily update Facebook and Twitter with your photos and places in one Loopt check-in
• Browse and rate local places and events – peruse detailed information from Zagat, Citysearch, and the Loopt community
• Save money through special offers from nearby retailers with local coupons I’m not sure how this application will affect battery life since it constantly updates in the background so if you try it out be sure to let me know how it worked for you in the comments. Loopt is currently available in the BlackBerry App World as a free download for the BlackBerry Curve 8900 (T-Mobile, AT&T), BlackBerry Tour 9630 (Sprint, Verizon) and BlackBerry Bold 9000 (AT&T). For more info about this update check out the press release after the jump.

Press Release:
San Francisco, CA – November 9, 2009 – Loopt announced today at the BlackBerry® Developer Conference that it has launched a major update for its free application for BlackBerry® smartphones, which is designed to connect users to the most relevant places and people nearby using background location updating. This brand new version of Loopt enhances users’ ability to discover the world around them – revealing who’s around, what to do, and where to go. At the 2009 BlackBerry® Developer Conference, Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, was invited on stage to perform a live demonstration of the new Loopt mobile application for BlackBerry smartphones. “Loopt has always been focused on building a ubiquitous interoperable service for the mobile space and we’re thrilled to be showcased on the BlackBerry platform,” said Altman. “We are especially excited to take advantage of background location updating on BlackBerry smartphones to help power social, local discovery on this latest version of Loopt.” Loopt on BlackBerry smartphones runs in the background, which allows users to update their location in real-time while they are on the move, even when the Loopt application is not running in the foreground. The world around them never stops moving so Loopt on the BlackBerry should not either. “The BlackBerry platform excels in enabling multitasking and deep integration between applications and functionality on the smartphone. Loopt has done a tremendous job of bringing location-based services and social communications together to enable BlackBerry smartphone users to discover, share, and connect,” said Tyler Lessard, Vice President, Global Alliances and Developer Relations at Research In Motion. Loopt now offers dynamically-generated, relevant local content about places and events from some of the best sources on the Web to help users meet up with nearby friends, explore new places to grab food, and find local events happening now. Feature highlights include: • Discover the best places and events, including those rated highly by your friends on Pulse • See where your friends are on maps – view their latest updates listed in real-time and comment on them • Check-in to instantly share your updates with friends – easily update Facebook and Twitter with your photos and places in one Loopt check-in • Browse and rate local places and events – peruse detailed information from Zagat, Citysearch, and the Loopt community • Save money through special offers from nearby retailers with local coupons Loopt is proud to partner with Zagat, the world’s leading provider of consumer-survey based information. Zagat’s quality, trusted information is based on the collective experiences of thousands of avid consumers. “We are excited to offer the Loopt community access to Zagat’s top lists and information about special Zagat events in their area,” said Nina S. Zagat, Co-Founder and Co-Chair of Zagat Survey. “It is our mission to provide consumers with Zagat content wherever they are and whenever they need it.” Loopt is available for free for the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8900, BlackBerry® Bold™ 9000, and the BlackBerry® Tour™ smartphones on BlackBerry App WorldTM. Go to http://www.blackberry.com/appworld and search for “Loopt”. About Loopt Loopt, based in Silicon-Valley and backed by leading venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and New Enterprise Associates, has created an interoperable social-mapping service that allows individuals to use their location to discover the world around them – enabling them to find and enjoy the people, places, and events that mean the most right here and now using their mobile phones. With Loopt, individuals will always know who’s around, what to do, or where to go. Loopt is available across all the major U.S. carriers and supported on over 100 mobile devices. Loopt was designed with privacy considerations at its core and offers a variety of effective and intuitive privacy controls

No, this is not a BlackBerry to the left. It’s an iPhone displaying it’s LinkedIn application. If you have ever looked at this application on your BlackBerry, you likely did not look a second time. However, it’s been a big week for both of these corporate standards…….

LinkedIn: LinkedIn made several announcements this week. Their pages have gone through, may continue to be going through, a substantial redesign that places more emphasis on status updates. Can you say Twitter and FaceBook? Speaking of Twitter, you can now Tweet your status directly from LinkedIn. While this is kind of cool, I have been updating my status to LinkedIn via Ping.fm for some time now. You can also now “follow” others and, with the paid version, organize your profiles. I was at a seminar earlier this year and the presenter asked the question “How many of you have FaceBook set as your home page?”. A number of hands went up and I was frankly surprised. You actually conduct your day-to-day tasks with FaceBook being your focus? I do have to wonder how many hands would have gone up if that same question were asked about LinkedIn.

There was other big news from LinkedIn and this affects BlackBerry users. BlackBerrys like … mine. The new LinkedIn app is coming soon and it looks very much like the cool app already available for the iPhone. Read about it on the LinkedIn blog. Finally, LinkedIn has also introduced its Personal Plus paid accounts at $60 per year vs. the previously lowest price paid version of about $300 per year. Read about this on the WindMill Networking blog.

BlackBerry: Several addtional announcements were made by RIM this week including the introduction of the Storm II. As my service (T-Mobile) does not even offer the Storm I, this has little effect on me. Loopt came out with a new version of its geo location app for BlackBerry. I had installed this app a couple of weeks ago, pronounced it as being lame and a battery killer, and then was enticed to take another look. The interface has been vastly improved and I was advised by a friend, Dean Larson, to turn off the GPS when the application is not running to preserve battery power. Maybe I’m stupid but I had ass/u/med that if the application was not open, that it was not sucking juice. That would be wrrro, wrrroon, wrrroooong (smile).

Also coming soon is Xobni for the BlackBerry. I have Xobni in use with my Outlook account and just love it! Having it for my BlackBerry? Sweet! If you go to the Xobni site there is a spot where you can sign up to be notified as soon as this app becomes available.

So, it’s been a pretty exciting week for those of us who don’t have all of the coolest toys on the planet. At least we have not yet been sent to the Island of Misfit Toys but we have been close to getting our tickets (smile). This is the best thing about competition. Both LinkedIn and BlackBerry have great products that have been around a long time. Kind of like Oldsmobile. O.K., bad reference (smile). The point is that both seem to have recognized that in order to maintain their individual relevance, they need to step up their game.

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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I first thought of this concept when I was doing my MBA (around 4 to 5 years back). It was always thing of “what would happen if I could create a social network for mobile phones”? This is not like Facebook for mobile or Twittering through a mobile phone. The main difference would be that it would be:

1. Incredibly location-specific: In telecom terminology, it would be at a cell-level or a site-level grouping

2. Incredibly purpose-specific: That is, it would create links between people who have similar attributes.

The first point is simple. If someone in my friends’ network is at Worli Seaface and so am I (on the other end), we both would get an intimation about the other’s presence. Once we both agree to link up, a chat window would open wherein we could figure out where to meet and even whether to meet right now.

The second point would be the killer: Imagine two people (strangers to each other) at the same place (Bandstand if you must), one is a VC and the other is an entrepreneur seeking VC capital. If the VC is “looking” for entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurs is “searching” for VCs, the social networking platform would consider these two people invitations to link/meet up. Maybe, once the requests are approved, the VC gets access to the entrepreneurs’ profile to see what the company is about and then chat with him on that.

A few salient points:

1. Intimation without confirmation: It should never be clear to one of the parties whether the other party is ignoring the invite or does not know about it. This is because, if I know that you received an intimation that I am around and you don’t want to connect, I may feel insulted. Hence, there needs to be a distinction between logging on to the network and receiving intimations

2. Ability to turn-off the intimations at any time: Personalization extreme. I choose on which communities (in the above example, the VC would belong to a community of VCs investing in startups and the entrepreneur in a community which seeks VCs) I want to receive intimations from and which I don’t

3. Maybe increase or decrease the range of search for other people

4. Add-ons – Whether I can add testimonials, comments, blog urls, my feeds, etc.

Loopt does that to a significant extent except that it links people based on friends’ networks and tags but neglecting to integrate community and purpose. From their site:

Loopt shows users where friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. Loopt helps friends connect on the fly and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events. Users can also share location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs. Loopt was designed with user privacy at its core and offers a variety of effective and intuitive privacy controls.

A similar kind of mobile community here: New Loopt App Helps You With Random Hookups … Now

While the concept is the same, the objective is different. Maybe .

In a previous post I arrogantly announced that I was kicking FireFox to the curb and switching over to Chrome. Well, I did and now it looks like I may need to make the switch back (smile). Mind you, I like Chrome. It is blazing fast. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is not loaded up by a lot of available add-ons that reside on my FireFox page. Honestly, I was able to get by without those.

My problems with Chrome center around the fact that it just does not play nice with several programs that I use regularly including: Ning (editing problems), FreeCRM (dumping me out of the software), and WordPress.com (a combination of crashes and editing issues). Unfortunately, those issues outweigh the speed gained. My biggest problem with FireFox remains typing latency. I am hoping that this may be resolved in version 3.6. If you look at the image in the upper left corner of this post, the logo in the middle is a combination FireFox/Chrome icon. I am realizing that this is sometimes what it takes….. two browsers at the call for different applications.

DSL: In another vain attempt to maybe minimize my latency problems. I upgraded my DSL speed today from 1.5 meg to 7. Do I see a huge improvement in terms of speed anywhere? No and that sucks The conversion was also touch and go and I am so grateful that I chose to have the Qwest tech do the installation and can promise you that I made sure I got my money’s worth on that service.

Bing Mobile and Loopt: I installed these apps on my BlackBerry this week. For me at least, Loopt is lame. As for Bing mobile with live search, great idea but I can not seem to figure out an easy way to get the voice search to work. On top of that, both these apps are GPS reliant. Loopt is all GPS. Having those activated proved to be a huge drain on my battery so I removed Loopt altogether and disabled the GPS on Bing. I can activate it if I ever need it.

Google Wave: I am severely underwhelmed by this product. What good is it to provide somebody with an invitation to try Wave and then not provide you with any invitations that you can send to others so that you have somebody to “Wave” to? At best, it strikes me as a fancy hybrid of instant messaging and email. Now, if you and your team were to schedule a time to all meet together on-line for a wave session, I can see the value. Like email, it is totally dependent on having whoever you wish to collaborate with being on board at the same time. I think I have 6 people on my contact list that have it, one of whom I have no idea of who he even is, and even the person who sent me the invite has never responded to my request to collaborate. Same with two others. This tells me that nobody in my small circle is any more excited about this product than I am.

My one bright spot for the week has been threadsy. I requested a private beta invite a few weeks ago and one came in my inbox a few days ago. Think of a Tweetdeck or Seesmic like interface, and it is very pretty, and then throw your email feed(s) along with Twitter and FaceBook. Yes. Multiple emails and multiple Twitter accounts. It get’s better. Your email is not just a feed. You can actually use it to send messages and reply to those received. More on this cool app in an upcoming post.

Well, pretty grumpy this week. That parking ticket on Tuesday didn’t help (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Hi, my name is Logan and I have a social media addiction. I know the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. But I’m perfectly okay with this addiction. After having a conversation with some friends last night and realizing I have 7 twitter clients alone. Yes 7. And I use them all for one way or another. So I went looking through my phone and thought I would break down all my social networking apps.

WordPress for iPhone
Boxcar
Facebook
Ireddit
Loopt
Nambu
Motherfeed
Iblogger
Tweetie
Plurk
Tweet deck
Tumblr
Twittelator
Whrrl
Twitterific
Loopt mix
Skype
Twit vid
Echofon
Foursquare
Flickr

Yes that’s right. I use a total of 21 seperate apps on a daily basis. Each are used for a specific purpose.

MOBILE

John Biggs from Techcrunch just got his hands on the the Twitter Peek aka the Tweek and he’s trying to figure out who, specifically, this is for. First, consider this his review: this device is not very good if you’re a Twitter “power user” like him or anyone else with maybe 100+ followers and a few hundred folks you follow. (Techcrunch 11/3)

When Loopt launched in 2006 it was ahead of a curve that is just starting to be recognized: Location. Now, with services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and even Twitter fueling the location-based services frenzy, Loopt realized that it needed to shift its strategy a bit. Enter Pulse, a new feature launching today. (Techcrunch11/3)

So we got new phones at the place that provides me the means to survive. Most got blackberries but my non gay partner and I opted for the droid mytouch. Pretty sweet phone really and the web 2.0 capabilities are awesome.

The apps for the droid OS are pretty robust. I have an apple touch as well and while there are more apps for the touch the Mytouch has plenty of cool stuff that you can waste time on. Also i believe that all this can be done via touch or iphone plus the gamut of other smart-phones that are on the market today.

The first app that i think is just as cool as can be is called:

Pixel Pipe- free- Pixel Pipe Pro- .99 cents- http://pixelpipe.com/

This app has hooks to all the big social networks and most of the small ones. You just set the “pipes” up in the app with your log on information and then you can upload any media that is on the phone to any of the sites you have set up. Very sweet.

Of course the phone has the hooks into flickr but it also will do geotagging automatically. It takes a few min to set up because you have to turn geotagging on in the phone, the camera, pixelpipe and then whatever app you are posting too, like flickr or twitter. So if you have geotagging turned on in the phone and on the app you are using to tweet or on the camera when you upload it through pixel pipe it will automatically put it on the map where you took the picture if you so desire.So the next time someone rolls around with an app to pick that up they can see what/where you posted. Pretty nifty stuff.

Then you can use a app called layar that marks in 3d where others have geotagged things, such as tweets or pictures in flickr.

Another great app is called loopt. With loopt you can add someone, say my non gay partner at my esteemed place of employment and if he is logged into loopt on the phone i can tell where he is and what he is doing. I am thinking we need to get a big game of tag going on- could be fun.

I am trying to figure how all this would or could solve business problems and haven’t come up with anything substantial yet but the level of connectivity you can have with this phone in just a few min is pretty amazing.

The way that each one of these little apps talks to each other can give an extremely good insight into someones life, if that’s what you are after.

While reading this week’s linkfest you may find some links are missing – don’t worry, many ISMAR related links and videos will be posted later this week.

• “There will be at least one terrorist attack that has used mobile augmented reality for planning, practice, and execution.”, this is just one of many predicitons by Robert Rice for the augmented world of 2012.
• Read Write Web theorize on why VCs aren’t backing AR startups, and Robert Rice  shares his experience. Well, according to ABI Research augmented reality will be a 350$ million market in 2014. That’s actually a pretty small figure (especially for a technology that aims to change the world), so maybe VCs just don’t see the next Youtube in it.
• Browsers: Loopt acquires GraffitiGeo, while Layar gets funded. Still, new browsers appear everyday, like Stalqer which is for stalking your friends, and lest us forget about AugSatNav, which is not new, but I’ve never found the time to write about.
• Of course, this coming week will see the appearance of the highly anticipated Junaio from Metaio.  Metaio has realeased a new video for the occasion and we get to read Gene Becker’s impressions.
• Thomas K. Carpenter on recreating the past using augmented reality.
• It always looks like the guys at YDreams are having lots of fun. This time they are playing soccer. Without a real ball.
• Campaigns: Esquire made Robert Downey Junior sit on a very big marker,  SAP shows its line of products with an augmented rubik cube (warning!  a very annoying narrator), there’s a street fighter like augmented reality game to promote the G.I.Joe DVD (what’s a summer blockbuster without some augmented love) and you can  become an elephant in this British campaign to ban the use of wild animals from circuses.

Although Halloween was yesterday, and I’ve dedicated a whole post to Halloween related AR, here’s another cute scarry example found by Bruce Sterling. Actually is part of a campaign to promote eco-friendly chargers and power managemant systems, and you can try it yourself here.

Have a nice week!

There is an interesting article about location-based networks and why they currently not have reached the critical mass at : Why won’t location-based networks grow? | VentureBeat.

Some parts could also found here:

[...] We decided to try out several of these apps ourselves and talk to the companies and several industry experts to find out. And what we found out is that there seem to be four factors holding these networks back: users are hesitant to join unless their friends are already on board, businesses won’t join up without a critical mass of users, many phones still can’t handle the necessary technology, and there are privacy and behavioral concerns.

Users are slow to join up

I installed Loopt on my iPhone when it was launced more than a year ago. I stopped using it soon after, since none of my Facebook friends or Gmail contacts were on it. Now it has more than a million users, so last week I installed it again — along with several other apps — but I didn’t have much luck this time either. The closest I came to a successful experience was with Foursquare, where I was able to find a few friends — most of whom haven’t yet responded to my invites. I’m inclined to think it’s not because they don’t like me but because they signed up for the service and never checked in again.[...]

I see three effective strategies in play to tackle the critical mass and chicken and egg problem:

Strategy 1: Build apps that can offer value on their own (stand alone) so that they don’t face chicken and egg problem in the first place. Aloqa, Geodelic, and Where are taking this tack. As Lacy said, social is secondary to location in their app. These applications should be able to draw in an audience purely on the basis of their location data. Once they get wider audience, they can focus more on the social element to make those apps more addictive.

Strategy 2: Introduce virality and game mechanics so that friends can multiply quicker. Though the idea of a stand alone app is appealing, it can also be severely limiting. Foursquare, Going, Gowalla are doing a good job of not only starting with a home page that provides value even without friends (so can act as a “stand alone” app), but also of using virality of social connections. Foursquare, in particular, goes even further by offering engaging gaming mechanics. I think they have a brilliant strategy, and are the company to watch in the space.

Strategy 3: Provide apps on several platforms and carriers etc. to widen the reach and pull in more users. Foursquare and a few others lack platform access: they are available only on limited phones. If an app is available only on the iPhone, what is the likelihood that you’ll find your friends on that network? As I’ll explain in a moment, Loopt has a lead here because they invest significant time to make sure their solution is available on several platforms. In addition they already have partnerships with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel, which puts them at a scale advantage. Further scale and network effects can be leveraged by partnering up with players such as Facebook, MySpace, or mobile operators, who have a huge existing base of users, each of whom already has a large address book that will get more location-aware with time. Google’s location-aware mobile app Google Latitude is the elephant in the room here. It has the advantage of Google’s large user base and brand name but doesn’t seem to be focusing so much on social aspects. Instead, it seems poised to commoditize on “Who is nearby” and location technology. And that brings us to the question of what business models are most likely to drive success.

Partnering businesses need better incentives

Getting users on board is hard. But there’s no point in even trying to get users if you can’t get businesses involved (restaurants, clubs, bookstores and many other locations who could benefit from some extra foot traffic). By bringing businesses on board, you can offer incentives to users, and therefore make it more likely that users will join your network. That is why location based apps need to get creative in their business models if they want to succeed in the long term. Foursquare seems to be working on the kind of partnerships that will be mutually beneficial to users and businesses. For example, a local Starbucks might offer you a free coffee if you are “mayor” for the week. However, I think the business models and logistics so far haven’t really been worked out. Consider the following two opportunities:

Making a location app the equivalent of a Safeway Club Card. Currently several grocery stores offer membership cards to track user purchasing patterns so that they can offer them custom recommendations and also make purchase and operations decisions that fit with buying behavior. Right now, though, there’s no way for a Pizza Hut to track how many times you go there and what you buy. With a proper arrangement and product enhancments, location based apps can easily provide such statistics to restaurants. For example, Going can sell users’ check-in information to restaurants and, in turn, give free or cheap offers to users who choose to participate. This will also help restaurants manage their supply chain more efficiently.

Making timely offers. Imagine being in a vicinity of a movie theater or Fenway Park. Let’s say the movie theater has some unsold seats for an upcoming movie. It can send discount ticket offers to anyone in the vicinity who’s signed up for such service. My guess is that several people who are shy about disclosing their location today will probably sign up for such incentives. It’s a clear win-win situation for local businesses and consumers.

The underlying technology is only just maturing

A few years ago, finding the location of a mobile phone was extremely challenging. The technologies you need to determine location are complicated; some carriers block developers from determining location, and in many cases find-location transactions can cost from 3 to 6 cents (according to Laura Diaz, Partner Relations Manager at NAVTEQ). This makes location apps cost prohibitive and technically challenging for most the developers. iPhone and, to a large extent, Google are helping change that (see the figure below from Eric Carr, VP of Location Technologies at Loopt, for a comparison of technologies). Apple, for example, has not only given developers free use of location based APIs but has also provided a layer of abstraction so that developers don’t have to worry about intricacies underlying the technology. Apple’s API, with the help of Skyhook Wireless, gets the best and fastest location information using one of the several methods available. Google on the other hand collects user generated data to build its network base station database that can then be used to find the location of a mobile user. With Android, Google is making further progress in commoditizing location information. This explains why so many location-based apps are just now coming to market.

Even as location technology is becoming cheaper and easier, it still remains a challenge for a lot of existing and older phones, and several international markets. “Desktop based” social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, had — to a large extent — no such problem, and were therefore able to gain scale quickly. If location-based networks want to tackle the scale problem, they’ll have to invest more resources. Going, for example, provides a WAP-based interface that can work with most cell phones with browsers. Loopt spends considerable resources on making sure its app works on several platforms. However, it’s only a matter of time before most phones become “smart”, and location based technology becomes a commodity.

Users not keen on being tracked

One final reason location-based networks might be having a hard time getting more users is that it’s hard to change user behavior. Many users are either not very comfortable with disclosing their whereabouts, or perhaps mistakenly think that the app is tracking them all the time (this is usually not possible unless you agree to give explicit control to the application). Perception of location-based privacy needs to change for these apps to take off. A few years ago, I thought it was totally insane to leave messages to your friend on public walls on Facebook, for example. Now it’s become a norm. I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar transition happens in location-based apps. However, I think the industry needs to change the general perception and fear among users and publicize incentives — such as the chance of a free coffee at a local Starbucks.

via Why won’t location-based networks grow? | VentureBeat.

Social mapping company Loopt has just launched one of their most popular features, “Mix,” as a stand along iphone application.  Loopt is a mobile application that essentially lets you discover the world around you, geographically.  A segment of Loopt called Mix, which lets you meet new people located nearby who also have the app, will now be its own entity.  According to the blog on Loopt’s website, “It’s ideal for those who are looking for new friends to go to events with, getting to know someone over coffee, or new to town—almost anything you can imagine.”  Features include:

- Free messaging with people around the country on Loopt Mix!
- Browse profiles of interesting people near you.
- Real-time, in-app chat with push notifications.
- Post multiple photos and status updates to introduce yourself.
- Use likes / tags and search filters to connect in the real world.

According to TechCrunch, CEO of Loopt Sam Altman thinks that the future of mobile web applications is dating services, which Mix will be primarily used for.  While the app won’t tell you the location of any of its members, it gives you their proximity and allows members to connect with each other and chat.  It also has changeable privacy settings for those who are a little nervous being too visible.  Mix is a natural progression for the iphone and whether it succeeds or fails, mobile dating applications will continue to gain in popularity.  We once thought anyone using the internet to date was creepy, but now it’s probably less creepy than meeting someone at a bar.  In a society where time is more valuable than air, why sit at home looking for dates, when you can go out, have fun, meet new single people and then date them all in the same night.

When it comes to the exciting, emerging, exploding, area of location-based services (LBS), there really should be a sort of universal prime directive.

Here it is:

Don’t Be Creepy

I mean really.  Spying on your kids with AT&T’s new family map?  Yikes!  (Admittedly, about 1/2 of the parents I polled on this said that their kids don’t get privacy until they are 18 and out of the house, while the other 1/2 said that they would rather rely on trust and continuous “where are you going” queries.)  Regardless, I’m sorry – it’s just plain creepy, and thus it violates the LBS prime directive…if I do say so myself.

Loopt and Latitude are more complicated.  From an engineer’s perspective: not creepy. After all, both give the user a lot of “dials and nobs” to control who sees you as you walk around broadcasting your position to the internet.  But from a regular person perspective:  way creepy.  It’s just too easy to not get those settings right and accidentally reveal to your girlfriend that you are not, in fact, out with the guys but have somehow wandered over to your ex-girlfriend’s house.  (Emergency lines for such incidents:  “Probably just a bug in the GPS.  It wasn’t me.  Someone stole my phone!  Really, I only love you, baby!”)

Cabulous is a new service from UpStart Mobile (disclaimer, I work there), and UpStart’s mantra is – wait for it – yeah: “Don’t Be Creepy!”  (It’s kinda like Google’s “don’t be evil”.)

Cabulous lets you see nearby taxis on your smartphone map – the exact location of actual drivers.  But it does not let anyone see you.  You reveal your position only when you hail a specific driver and choose to let him – and only him – see where you are.  (Presumably at that point you want the driver to know where you are.)  If you do nothing else, your position disappears after a few minutes, and not even we at UpStart Mobile can tell where you are.

Ruling from the prime directive judges:  Not so creepy.
(Just kidding…there aren’t really any prime directive judges, though we are talking to Leonard Nimoy and Shatner about it.)

At the end of last week, Loopt started a trial of its friend finder service for the iPhonethat integrates an always-on feature. Because the iPhone cannot run applications in the background it does limit the use of friend finder services like Loopt: once the application is closed none of your friend can see where you are.

To bypass this problem Loopt and AT&T have worked together so the location of the phone is not provided actively by the phone (when the application is open) but by the network which knows where the phone is all the time. This type of technology was already used by AT&T Familymap, the child tracking service from AT&T which can monitor children with iPhones.

A free trial of this enhanced Loopt service has begun for 1,000 test users. After this trial, the service will be available for a $3.99 monthly subscription. It will be billed by AT&T, not through the Apple App Store in the same way the wireless operator does for its navigation service developed by TeleNav.

via Loopt, AT&T bypass iPhone for always-on friend finder.

A location-based service (LBS) is an information or entertainment service for mobile devices that uses the user’s geographical position. There are many applications of mobile services, in a variety of contexts, such as health, work, personal life, etc. For example, thanks to LBS it is possible to discover the nearest banking cash machine, or the whereabouts of a friend.

There are hundreds of apps for the iPhone that provide location-based services, most of them combining these services with social networks. However, since third-party iPhone apps can’t run in the background due to limitations of iPhone’s SDK, it was not possible for those apps to update a user’s location in real-time.

Continue reading…

AT&T knows they haven’t been very good to us. But that’s ok, right? Right. Here’s their explanation:

Not only that, but Loopt will become the first semi-official “run in the background” app for the iPhone. The iPhone does not apps run in the background so that it’s battery can last longer. However, for $3.99, you can be stalked 24/7! Hooray. AT&T will let the application remain connected to it’s server however, the app will not be running in the background completely.

loopt

To date the iphone has only allowed certain built-in Apple apps to run in the background – mail and messaging for example – that basically listen for new events to come through and update you in real time. Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to run background processes – basically when you quit the app it is completely closed.

A big area where this lack of background processes is problematic is location-based services (LBS). If an app like Maps can’t run in the background, it can’t receive notifications as the user changes location. So even though the iPhone has the ability to know where you are at any given time via built in GPS, apps can’t take advantage of this information until you actually start an app. What that means is that cool services like being notified when you are near othe people or places doesn’t happen automatically – you have to intentionally have to check.

The social networking app Loopt, with the help of AT&T has somehow gotten around this problem. For $4/month you will be able to have background location enabled – for the Loopt application that is. So basically this will enable the iPhone to update the users’ location information even when the Loopt app proper isn’t running. That’s cool, but I say a) this functionality should be available to any developer building an LBS-based app, and b) it should be free.  There are rumors that Apple may provide such an option in a future OS update, but for now they are tightly controlling this access.

Other mobile OS’s such as Android and Palm’s WebOS provide this ability built-in.  This is one differentiator to makes me less of a fan of the iPhone OS and more open to moving to one of these other platforms. But it is clear that Apple has the capability to make this happen, so maybe they are just holding back and slowly releasing this functionality on a limited basis.  Either way, background LBS-based services, especially tied to social networking apps, is going to become more and more ubiquitous and important on mobile.  This IS one of the key differentiators between the mobile device and a desktop computer – it should be wildly taken advantage of.

Last week, Facebook released the latest iteration of their popular iPhone app. While the user experience is significantly improved, the Facebook app sadly remains little more than a miniaturized version of the Facebook website. This “lazy” approach to mobile app development certainly isn’t unique to Facebook.  iTunes is littered with apps that merely mimic consumer websites, thus failing to offer brand experiences particular to the iPhone and its unique modes of use. (One notable exception is the Amazon iPhone app, which offers Amazon Remembers,  an assisted shopping service specifically designed for mobility and iPhone functionality.)

What’s perhaps most disappointing about Facebook’s approach is that they have been slow to develop new services that take advantage of the wealth of in situ user-reported data about our activities, moods, and behaviors.

Consider Facebook’s now dominant role as a photo-sharing site. At its busiest, Facebook loads 550,000 photos each second, and you can assume that a fair share of these photos are uploaded or viewed via Facebook’s apps for smartphones. Now consider the metadata associated with these photos: The user’s GPS location, compass orientation, the time and date the photo was taken, whom else is present (via photo friend tags), and associated captions and concurrent status updates that provide some semantic cues as to what the photo literally and emotionally represents to the end user.

Get the picture?

The Facebook mobile app, and more specifically, the Facebook iPhone app is a powerful generative platform for an entire range of new services that Facebook could (and frankly, should) offer.

Imagine using Facebook’s deep archive of profile data and in situ metadata to find places and events around town that fit your desires at a moment’s notice.  Imagine having the ability to automatically view photos from your profile and the profiles of friends associated with a given location, time, or mood (“Placebooks,” anyone?).

To show you what this might look like, here is a very preliminary Facebook mobile app concept called “Sugar” I developed with two of my colleagues from the Institute of Design:

So where is mobile social networking heading? And what may lie ahead for Facebook?

Loopt, a location-based social network certainly grasps the power of in situ real-time user data and has recently begun offering “always on” service for users, allowing them to be alerted of the activity of nearby friends. While it is yet to be seen whether this type of service will achieve wide-scale adoption, it is an indication of what Facebook should be considering in future iterations of its mobile app (with the proper privacy features, of course). And to be fair, it seems Facebook may already be exploring such an idea with Nokia.

Mobile is the future of Facebook. When will Facebook begin to fully grasp this?

I’m addicted to my iPhone. I swear I play with it more thanI have ever played with my cock….and that my friends is saying a lot! 

There is a disgustingly endless amount of things you can do with this remarkable gift from the gods…some of my favorites (meaning ones that I obsessively use every fucking moment of every fucking day) are:

Facebook

It’s bad enough that when I’m home I check my FB every 15 minutes or so.. (god knows I sure as fuck would hate to miss a post about my friends in another state having a “kick-ass BBQ” that I will never be able to attend) but now put it on my iPhone!?!?  Now I check that badboy every 60 mother fucking seconds!!! I’m never going to miss a status update about when my friends put their kids to bed, or how much work sucked for them that day EVER AGAIN!!!

EchoFon

Nothing beats letting all of your followers know that you’re “Headed into work” or that ‘You just had the best egg salad sandwich in the world” …but now to be able to do that from your toilet!?!?! PRICELESS mother fuckers!! priceless!!!

Loopt

The Ultimate Stalker App!  You thought FB and Twitter helped you stalk…er keep track of friends… well with Loopt it actually shows you their geographic location!!! So grab your ski mask…download Loopt.. and get out there and show your obsession…er friends… just how much you care….

Those are just 3 of my favorites… and I have a lot….I have 6 pages of Apps on my iPhone… and the list just keeps on growing… but to be honest with you… I am fucking tired of typing and need to go take a dump and a shower… in that order… (I love the whole shower bidet concept)….  so look for more real soon…