When It Comes To Apps, Geosocial Is Not Geolocation

The study also differentiates geosocial apps (LBSNs) from the broader picture of geolocation mobile apps, a category that includes apps for navigation, map viewing, local search and local daily deals. Geosocial apps are far more powerful because they provide information about location and the user's social graph.

Social networks do offer location features, but location is just baked in. A few examples include Facebook Places, Google+ check-ins, Twitter posts with locations, Apple's Find My Friends app and the nearly dead Google Latitude. Location, however, is not central to Facebook and Twitter in the way it is to Foursquare and SCVNGR.

Geosocial apps also let you share your location out to your social networks, but many prefer to keep location where it's best used - in the location-based social network. Says Loopt: "There is a level of privacy people enjoy on geosocial apps."

Who Is Actually Using Geolocation Apps?

Forrester finds that people using geolocation apps are influential, connected and young.
Three-fourths of geolocation app users range from ages 23 to 45. Forty-three percent are Gen Y (ages 23-31) and 18% are Gen Z (ages 18-22). Gen X users are using geolocation apps less this year; in 2010, 42% said they used them versus only 32% this year. Not surprisingly, only 1% of seniors ages 67 and older used geolocation apps in 2011.

There is some good news for marketers. Geosocial apps are edging closer to mainstream American demographics. In 2010, users were only 22% female, and the average user's household income was $105,000. This year 37% of geosocial app users are female, and the average user's household income has dropped to $92,000.

Loopt tracks the location of users persistently, without their having to check-in manually (though you can do that too), and it will now send push notifications of Groupon deals nearby. GigaOm's Ryan Kim does a good job covering the announcement, but there are a few details in particular that I want to raise.

The partnership with Groupon raises a number of issues for me.

• This looks like an aggressive move to extend Groupon's mobile availability before Facebook Deals even gets out of the gate on mobile. That's smart. Groupon's Android App already has 2.5 million installs and the company says it expects more than half its deals to be redeemed by mobile in the coming years. That's good because we've heard that the rate of redemption by email list, the method the company is best known for, is shockingly, abysmally low. Web search serves the company much better than emails and a strong move into mobile is important. Especially because Facebook is sure to do so eventually as well - and Facebook has much richer data about customers.


• This sort of partnership could work well for Location Based Services like Loopt because it puts a dedicated sales force on the task of selling deals. A large, specialized, well-known sales force. That comes at a cost, presumably, when Groupon takes its cut - but the deal might well be worth it. The gap between hype for location-based business and the sales staff of most location-based startups is big - and not all of them are focused on selling deals like this. Imagine Foursquare with a daily deals layer that could be turned on or off.


• Groupon may or may not be the best company to do this and group buying may or may not be the best model to monetize location based social networks. Groupon's 50% margins and widespread dissatisfaction among retailers (depending on who you talk to, of course), means that someone else might better execute this same model over the long run. You know what I'd pay for in a location based network? Layers of information about the places I've gone. I really would. If the Kindle can sell more e-content than paper books, why can't Foursquare sell more local history, place-based stories, etc? Up with content! Down with coupons! Or at least just Up with Content, that's what I say.

Those are my take-aways from learning about this early deal between two trailblazers in location and local business technology. What do you think?

This is not just a story about Android struggling to keep developers happy, though. Mobile developers can program on top of device hardware capabilities, Operating System or software capabilities - or on top of the telephone networks themselves. The story of the Bad Piggy Bank is a page out of the larger story of a fight between device-level companies and network-level companies for the attention of developers. Traditionally, we think of post-iPhone mobile apps as being almost entirely based on the phone and its OS - but it doesn't have to be that way. Carrier level payment joins a list of other capabilities being advanced on the carrier level, including location tracking, presence status, push notifications and more.

Verizon, the largest wireless network in the United States (and, in full disclosure, a ReadWriteWeb sponsor), for example, held an all-too-unnoticed developers conference this September where it unveiled 20 different network-level Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) now available to developers building apps for customers who use the Verizon network.

People generally hate their telephone network providers, but they often love their handset providers. A big part of that is because the few apps that carriers have offered have been terrible, but handset and Operating Systems have become platforms for tons of very cool apps. What if the phone company could be as app-cool as an iPhone or Android? That's not just cool, it's also profitable and a source of industry power.

Carrier-oriented mobile apps would still be experienced by the user on their handset, of course, but the developers of those apps are able to tap into technical capabilities offered by the telephone networks themselves.

Payment is Just One of Many Options

Telecommunications middleware giant Alcatel-Lucent (disclosure: a ReadWriteWeb sponsor) is now focusing significant energy on bringing its carrier customers together with the most exciting developers it can find. Allison Cerra and Christina James of Alcatel recently outlined a number of key categories of network level APIs that carriers could offer in their book The Shift, including:

• Presence or availability status of an end user


• User location for ambient information services, geofencing and place-based commerce


• Identity; user profiles like social networks provide today


• Quality of Service flexibility for developers (bandwidth use turned up or down as needed - this one does make a person wonder about network neutrality of course)


• Storage, similar to the way a Content Delivery Network serves developers today


• Finally, billing - the type of service that Angry Birds announced today is something that carriers themselves could offer developers in some circumstances.

(Disclosure again: I wrote the foreword to the book The Shift. It's a really good book, not explicitly salesy at all.)

Alcatel-Lucent is taking a variety of steps to try to facilitate this move of application developers towards a more carrier-centric orientation, including this Fall's acquisition of cross-platform mobile app compiler OpenPlug (so the company's phone network customers can offer their own app development platforms) and a nascent API monitoring service (like Consumer Reports for anyone considering building on top of someone else's API) from ProgrammableWeb, another recent acquisition.

It's not just traditional telephony companies that are thinking in terms of network capabilities as a development platform, either. IBM's chief scientist Jeff Jonas emphasizes that there are a whole lot of options that remain unexplored to date for software development and data analysis throughout the mobile value chain. "Mobile devices in America are generating something like 600 billion geo-spatially tagged transactions per day," he says.

"Every call, text message, email and data transfer handled by your mobile device creates a transaction with your space-time coordinate (to roughly 60 meters accuracy if there are three cell towers in range), whether you have GPS or not. Got a Blackberry? Every few minutes, it sends a heartbeat, creating a transaction whether you are using the phone or not."

For potential developers on top of that huge data platform, that number Jonas references is 7,000 times bigger than the full firehose of Twitter data that so many companies are scrambling to get their hands on - and potentially far more valuable. (A final disclosure, IBM, like Verizon, advertises on ReadWriteWeb through the Federated Media ad network. This is not a commercial, it's a blog post about a really interesting development in technology. It only makes sense to reference some of the most interesting work being done online in this area and it just so happens that the most interesting companies doing that work also sponsor ReadWriteWeb.)

This wealth of carrier-level opportunity is something that some application developers have recognized for years, of course. The first big recognizable location-based social network on the market was Loopt - which was funded an incredible 5 years ago, you'll note, by Sequoia Capital, backers of Google and YouTube. Loopt ties in to carrier level location data and thus has offered "background apps" since before the iPhone was out of diapers.

In other words, sometimes teaming up with carriers lets developers do things they couldn't otherwise do. Like build a Bad Piggy Bank, for example. That's not the end of the story at all, though. The story of mobile developers beginning to explore more carrier-oriented development paradigms is much, much bigger.

What's worse, for marketers hoping to tap into a diverse and savvy audience of shoppers, diners, and other local consumers, the details on audience make-up are disappointing. According to Forrester, LBS users are 80% male and 70% are aged 19-35.

So should marketers stay away for now until these services mature? Absolutely not. And here's why.

Yes, the audience for Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown, Brightkite, Loopt and the other smaller players in the location-based services game is young, tech-savvy, educated (70% have a 4-year degree) and predominately male.

But so is the average early adopter of new technology, historically speaking. As Foursquare's co-founder Dennis Crowley explains, we're still in the early days of location-based services. "Go back to Facebook's stats in 2005 or Twitter's stats in 2006, and you'll probably find data that tells a similar story."

And yet, despite the relatively small size of these apps' user bases (Foursquare and Brightkite have around 2 million users, Loopt has 4 million, Booyah's MyTown has 2.5 million, and Gowalla 340,000), these apps attract the ideal customer for marketers to target with mobile coupons, ads and other location-based campaigns. These users are the "influentials," which, in marketing speak, means they're more likely to spread the word about a business, share their opinions and encourage others to join in this new-fangled check-in game.

In fact, the report finds that 38% of these users are more likely than others to have friends and family ask their opinions prior to purchase. They're 14-20% more likely to use their phones for comparison shopping and, in general, they're more likely to research a product or service before purchasing.

In other words, when these folks get a good deal, they know they're getting a good deal. And they'll probably tell someone about it.

Challenges for LBS: Fragmentation & Potential for Big Players to Crush Small Ones

Although LBS apps have the potential to connect marketers to key customers, there are still a number of issues beyond the demographics of the current audience and its size. For one thing, the market is heavily fragmented. Not only are there half a dozen or so "major" players in the check-in business, there are also other location-based apps that focus on different types of experiences. For example, the object-based social network Stickybits allows anyone to tag real-world items with barcoded stickers, while other niche apps like SCVNGR turn checking in into a puzzle-solving game. Although not mentioned in the report, we could add Miso to this list of niche apps as well, as it lets you "check in" to TV and movies you're watching.

Another potential problem for today's LBS applications is the potential for a big player to come in and dominate the market. Google already has location-based services Latitude and Buzz, both which have the potential to increase as the Android market grows. Yahoo has partnered with Nokia on mapping and has acquired various location-based services, too. We also have to point out the elephant in the room, even though Forrester did not: Facebook. If the social network with now half-a-billion users ever formally launches an LBS app or service, it could be game over for everyone else.

Is Forrester Warning Marketers Away from LBS?

The knee-jerk reaction to Forrester's report (as evidenced here in the comments of this AdAge article) is that the research is essentially downplaying the potential of the LBS market. That's not necessarily the case.

Instead, Forrester not only highlights some high-profile partnerships between LBS apps and major brands (Starbucks/Foursquare & Brightkite, NatGeo, USA Today & The Washington Post/Gowalla, Gap/Loopt), it also recommends particular companies take special notice of the potential here.

Companies engaged in event marketing, those with retail storefronts and those whose online tools translate to offline interaction (Craigslist and ZipCar, for example) could all benefit from using this technology, the report recommends.

And while other businesses may not be able to generate a critical mass of volume with LBS-based programs, now is the time to experiment, says Forrester. Male-targeted companies may have better luck than others, but only for the moment. Other marketers may want to wait for demographic and adoption rates to increase and for the "vendor dust to settle," though. While yes, Forrester concludes that, in some cases, "the potential for LBS doesn't match the hype," that statement ends with an important qualifier: "....YET."

"Rather than someone checking into a specific application, we would already know you are there," Cuban explains. That prospect is either incredible or downright scary, depending on how you feel about privacy.

For users of location-based services, particularly the so-called check-in applications like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite, Loopt, MyTown, Latitude and others, the process of registering yourself as present at a given location is still very much a manual one. A user has to pull out their smartphone, launch an app, wait for it to load, then tap a button to check in. Hardly a social activity for what are branded "social networking services."

Those who go through this process are often rewarded for doing so, with tips about the establishment from their friends, like the best entrée to order at a restaurant or which bartender makes the best martini. Sometimes location-based services users even get access to special discounts or coupons. For example, those who become "mayor" of their local Starbucks on Foursquare (a honorary title given to those who check in the most) get discounts on Frappuccinos. Those who check in to clothing store Ann Taylor get discounts on purchases, too. And those who check in using IZEA's WeReward can actually earn cash back.

But for the mainstream user, the idea of checking in hasn't caught on just yet, in part due to privacy concerns and also perhaps because they don't realize the value of doing so. Only a handful of major chains and other big-name businesses are offering tangible rewards, so checking in because of a coupon or special is a decidedly hit-or-miss endeavor at this point.

Despite these potential pitfalls, location-based services are steadily growing. Loopt has 4 million users, Google's Latitude 3 million, Booyah's MyTown and Foursquare over 2 million and Gowalla 340,000. And those user counts are growing fast for some - Foursquare, for example, is adding on average 12,900 new users per day.

Background Check-ins Encourage "Serendipity"

One problem all the location-based companies are trying to address is a way to overcome the manual process involved with performing a check-in. For services like Loopt, the idea has been to take advantage of a smartphone's ability to run processes in the background, a feature just added to the latest iPhone OS software, iOS 4. "The ability to run location-based apps in the background makes serendipity happen... Users will be able to share their location and receive alerts on the phone in their pocket when they're near a friend," said Sam Altman, CEO of Loopt, when the feature went live.

Although that makes the process easier, there are still questions to be answered: How long does background sharing remain on? Do you need to remind people on a regular basis that they're sharing their movements? How often do you do so? Should this be switched on by default?

Passive Check-ins with your Face?

Now it seems check-ins may become even more passive than apps that run in the background if Cuban has his way. All you would have to do is walk into an establishment and your check-in would be registered - yes, via facial recognition software.

Hints of "Minority Report," anyone? Indeed, such software could "see" you, check you in and then offer you personalized advertisements, much like those presented to Tom Cruise's character in the futuristic movie where billboards and holograms knew who you were and what you purchased.

Will that be horrible or helpful, though? After all, recommendation systems on sites like Amazon.com and Netflix already help improve upon your shopping experiences, so why not location-based software?

However, even though such systems are likely to be opt-in, some will find this automated Big Brother type process far too invasive. And others think that it misses the point entirely. Dennis Mink, CEO of location-based aggregator FootFeed, says, "By sharing where you are, what you are doing and thoughts about the experience, it gives you a sense of being connected to the world. This is what motivates people to [use] Twitter, post a status on Facebook or check in at their current location... To think that a video system with facial recognition software can fill the emotional needs of millions of people is quite simply misguided."

On the other hand, Aaron Strout, CMO of Powered, a dedicated social media agency, thinks the approach sounds "quite innovative," but cautions that facial recognition technology may not be able to perform on this level for at least of couple of years.

So how did it fare? Not bad at all, if I do say so myself.

However, I'm not so old and boring (yet) that I can't see the appeal of these services. In my younger, more active days - before I was tied down to a life of diaper runs and other errands - an app like Brightkite or Foursquare would have been a blast to use. But sadly, I never got to experience those types of services back when they would have been the most fun for me - heck, I don't think any of my college friends even had cell phones. (You kids have it so good, you have no idea).

That being said, I really enjoyed using Check.in. It was incredibly easy to use, always found my location accurately and worked without error or crashes.

My only complaint was that the app was slow at times, even when I had a good signal, although that could be due to the fact that it was still in private beta. Perhaps they haven't thrown enough computing power behind it yet?

Sometimes this slowness, which often occurred during the "magical place matching" screen, was a major issue. When doing drive-by check-ins (a.k.a. "quick stops"), for example, I found myself leaving the venue before the processing was done. Curse you Starbucks drive-thrus and your speedy service! I will never be mayor!

We Need a Place-Matching Database

Another issue, and one that Brightkite has no control over, is the lack of a unified places database, as TechCrunch mentioned earlier this morning. Brightkite is on board with this idea, but the other major players need to agree, too, in order for it to work.

What this means in terms of app usability, though, is that you often have to tell it that Location X on this service is the same as Location Y on that service. Check.in, for what it's worth, walks you through this process with ease, but it can slow down check-in time even further.

In other words, if you feel stupid "checking in" to places and try to get it over with quickly before you have to explain yourself to your non-early-adopter friends and family, Check.in won't solve that problem - it makes it worse.

Solid, Well-Built App

Outside of these inconveniences, neither of which are necessarily Brightkite's problem, I can report that Check.in is a solid, well-built app. As you check in to the various services via Check.in, the app also returns relevant data, new mayorships, points, etc.

The app has also been improved during the beta period with better, tighter privacy controls, and sharing settings for posting to Twitter and Facebook.

Insights and Future Plans

The Brightkite team shared a few early insights from their beta trials, which involved 6,000 users and 135,000 check-ins. The average user checked in 20 times, more than 2.3 million places were queried and most users checked in to two or three services at once. Friday is the busiest day for check-ins and Sunday is the quietest.

The team now wants your feedback as to what needs to be added or improved next. They've asked Yelp to open up its API, but so far the company has said no. We suggest it consider adding another major LBS player, Loopt. According to the Brightkite blog, it appears that service is also considering Check.in integration into Brightkite's native apps, a decision that could easily make Brightkite the top LBS-based app across multiple platforms.

The current version of the iPad has to rely on WiFi triangulation to pinpoint a user's location. As long as you are in a city, this works reasonably well. We expect to see more location-based iPad apps, including from Foursquare and Gowalla, once Apple launches the WiFi + 3G version of the iPad, which will include a GPS chip. For now, Loopt's Pulse is the only other location-based social network that has arrived on the iPad, but Loopt's app doesn't allow users to check in from the app and focuses on letting users browser photos, places, events and their friends streams instead.

Rally Up on the iPad

When we first reviewed Rally Up's iPhone service a few weeks ago, we noted that the application puts a very strong emphasis on privacy and allows you to tweak these privacy settings individually for every single on of your followers and the people you follow. As Rally Up's co-founder Sol Lipman told us, Rally Up is really more about connecting you to your "real" friends. It is important to note that Rally Up's sophisticated privacy controls also gives you the flexibility to follow whoever you want to and just broadcast very little to none of your location data to people you don't fully trust or know.

Using the iPhone version of Rally Up is a lot of fun - in part thanks to the application's minimalist design - but as with so many iPad apps, the larger screen makes browsing your friends streams and looking at their locations on a large map a lot easier. Rally Up's iPad app also emphasizes the microblogging aspects of the service, where the extra screen estate comes in handy for posts with photos, for example.

We're excited about location too; see our enthusiastic write-ups What Twitter's Geolocation API Makes Possible and The Era of Location as Platform Has Arrived. But it's getting a little ridiculous. We offer below a few thoughts to consider about all this location madness.

Imagine the Future, It's Going to Be Different

If location based services ever become popular with the mainstream, every urban area might end up looking like the Foursquare map of downtown Austin this weekend. That means services are going to have to come up with creative and interesting new ways to make that data usable day-to-day and not overwhelming.

Likewise, when you think about the future, imagine Facebook being a player in this market, because they are going to be soon. It's possible that Facebook and Twitter could be where all these other services meet-up. Brightkite has different features than BlockChalk but we can see what our friends are doing across any of these apps on Facebook, perhaps. And Facebook is where your mom checks-in, if she's not an early adopter.

Finally, will location tracking be persistent? Loopt right now uses mobile carrier tie-ins to track your location constantly and expose it to a circle of trusted friends. Is that something that all services will enable in the future? Gowalla CEO Josh Williams told us "no way" does he think that will be the dominant model, but Adam Duvander, author of the forthcoming book Mapscripting 101, says he agrees with Loopt: that the value in persistent location tracking will be so compelling that everyone will end up going for it in the end, once proper privacy settings are figured out.

What do you think, do you think persistent location tracking is the future of location based services?

These are some of the things I'm thinking about location this week.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/location_analysis_sxsw.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/location_analysis_sxsw.php Location Thu, 11 Mar 2010 17:00:52 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick Loopt, makers of a popular mobile social networking application of the same name, is introducing a new iPhone application today called Loopt Mix. Where their original app focuses on connecting you with your friends while you're out and about, Loopt Mix is more about introducing you to "the people you wish you knew." In other words, "people" like that attractive person giving you eye from the other end of the bar.

]]> The new application is actually a spin-off of Loopt's "Mix" feature, which lets you browse the Loopt profiles of those around you within its original mobile social networking application. Now Mix is its very own app - a change that could attract a whole new user base looking to do a little more than just basic "networking."

Although the company is not specifically marketing Mix as a dating application, it's clearly designed for mobile singles because - let's face it - who else would want to browse the photos and profiles of nearby folks and strike up IM-based conversations with those who look interesting? If that's not about dating, then it's just borderline creepy.

While Loopt Mix is not the first iPhone-based dating application - others like DatingDNA and Skout have beaten them to the punch - the company may have a leg up on their competition already, thanks to brand recognition alone. That's because Loopt was featured in one of the many iPhone TV commercials last year as a great way to stay in touch with friends. Given widespread exposure like that, Loopt is already well known beyond the early adopter set.

Loopt Mix Features

Like its competitors, Loopt Mix lets you tap into the iPhone's location-based features to see which other Loopt Mix members are nearby. You can browse their profiles, view and post photos and status messages, and start chat sessions - all of which is par for the course with mobile dating apps these days. In fact, there's nothing all that revolutionary about Mix's feature set, except perhaps for its ability to send you real-time push notifications - something that a few other social networking apps, Facebook included, have yet to adopt.

In Loopt Mix, the push notifications work with the app's built-in chat functionality, so you're notified when and if someone responds to you, without you having to sit there looking uncool while constantly reloading the page or staring at a blank chat window.

It's also worth mentioning that you don't have to be out on the town to take advantage of Loopt Mix. Since it simply locates people near you, you could use this anywhere - even in your own home - to find and connect to other interesting people. However, should you ever want to go offline, you and the other person would have to make arrangements to meet somewhere... just as you would on a "real" dating website like Match.com or eHarmony. The only difference with Loopt Mix is that, unlike traditional dating sites, the app is completely free. That, too, could help Mix grow - especially in this tough economy, where finding love for a fee is a luxury many can no longer afford.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/loopt_launches_dating_app_for_iphone_loopt_mix.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/loopt_launches_dating_app_for_iphone_loopt_mix.php Apple Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:01:00 -0800 Sarah Perez The reason why Steven Seagal's 80's movies lack relevance for modern day audiences is because if a group of creepy, rogue mercenaries were to abduct us now, we'd be able to ping 10 nearby friends for backup. If you're like us, you're using one or more location-based services that rely on GPS data, phone signal strength or visibility in relation to nearby wireless networks. In other words, through Twitter, Loopt, Brightkite, Foursquare or Google Latitude, your location is sitting in a database. Nonetheless, according to a recent report by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, you shouldn't have to forgo your locational privacy to find nearby friends or restaurants.

]]> Locational privacy refers to the expectation that as regular citizens our whereabouts are not being monitored. We've all heard of the horror stories about illegal wiretapping and citizen surveillance, but what about the services we opt into? According to the report "On Locational Privacy, and How to Avoid Losing it Forever", it's fairly easy to use cryptographic techniques to ensure your anonymity. Rather than revealing a mobile device's owner to service providers, one way to ensure anonymity is for a mobile device to ping services using a cryptographic proof-of-identity. A University of Waterloo report entitled, "Louis, Lester and Pierre: Three Protocols for Location Privacy" provides a deeper look at identity masking techniques.

This is an important subject for those companies looking to enter into the geo-locational space. Groups that encrypt their data are taking pains to reduce the threat of identity theft, illegal surveillance or for data to be subpoenaed by a court. These companies will be rewarded with customer loyalty when the unfortunate time comes for one or all three of the above scenarios.

Those critical of encryption might suggest that law-abiding citizens have nothing to hide, but that simply isn't true. What if you're in alcoholics anonymous? Or you've simply spent the night at a person's house? And honestly, do you really want your running club to see how often you eat at Arby's? Encryption allows us to ping our friends while maintaining an air of mystique, and at the end of the day, the companies that care about their customers, keep them.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eff_calls_on_companies_to_encrypt_location-based_d.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/eff_calls_on_companies_to_encrypt_location-based_d.php Lifestreaming Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:00:42 -0800 Dana Oshiro A friend recently held a garage sale to purge all of his worldly possessions. At 8:58am before the final tables were out, men and women circled the block like buzzards over a fresh kill. The first group included punky-looking eBay dealers, antique collectors and audiophiles looking for rare dance hall vinyls. The second wave consisted of board game enthusiasts, recycled clothing designers, preschool teachers and espresso-touting Shabby Chic home decorators. And finally, at about 2pm, the geeks and bike-enthusiasts came to claim the last Playstation games, computer parts, brake levers and tubes.

Garage sales are no longer just for blue-haired grandmothers with teacup fetishes. While eBay and Etsy are great for selling rare or specialty items, setting up an auction or store for your mismatched cutlery might not get you the results you need. One blessing in this down economy is that we're learning to reclaim and recycle in a way that our grandmothers have been doing for years. Whether you like haggling over weird items on a Sunday or you'd simply like to list your own sale, here are some great resources.

]]> 1. Weekend Treasure: This site does a great job of pulling listings from Craigslist and other sites and aggregating them onto a map. The nice thing about this site is that once you've drilled down to your targeted listing, you can view the source article for further details.

2. GSALR: This site improves where Craigslist leaves off. While it does not offer images from sales, it does offer a map of the region, an RSS feed on new listings and a trip planner for multi-sale routes. Garage Sale Nation offers a similar tool, and the most results seem to appear in Massachusetts, Virginia, New York and Michigan.

Yard Sale Search: This site is extremely bare bones, but if you're just looking for a site to list all of the multi-family sales in your area, the results are quick and plentiful.

3. ZipGarage: ZipGarage is a site where garage sale hunters type in their postal code and receive results on sales in their area. RWW first wrote about ZipGarage in 2007. While this site is perhaps one of the best designed garage sale sites, it still lacks the users. If you're having a sale, you might still want to embed the widget to give directions to your users.

4. Upcoming and Facebook Events: Your friends DO want to buy your junk, or at the very least they want to spend Sunday drinking beer on your lawn. A great way to kick start a yard sale is to reach out to your online networks, prepare some sandwiches and treat the event like a lawn party. Upcoming and Facebook events offer great ways to announce localized events and the best part is that your friends are likely to get calendar reminders for your sale.

5. Twitter, Loopt: These location-based services are great for that last minute sale push or reminder. While nearby followers might not have planned to buy anything, if they're in the area, they just might stop by for an impulse purchase.

6.The Local Paper and Craigslist: We're sure you already know about these options, but if you're having a sale, it would be silly not to list here. With Craigslist, users can narrow their search by neighborhood and keyword, and choose to specify only those results that contain images.

*Final Tips for Sellers: After you've tweeted, listed and advertised your yard sale, remember that old school rules still apply. Some of the must-haves of a garage sales include ample signage, properly labeled tables, extra boxes and bags, a measuring tape for furniture and about $100 in small bills and quarters for change.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/lets_go_sale-ing_a_yardsale_resource_guide.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/lets_go_sale-ing_a_yardsale_resource_guide.php Lists Mon, 20 Jul 2009 11:00:00 -0800 Dana Oshiro After publishing her book about social capital and the power of social networking,The Whuffie Factor, Tara Hunt is doing what any change agent does. She's changing. She's quit her job, purchased a winnebago and coerced five friends to karaoke across the country with her. Wuffaoke Or Bust is a cross-country road trip where six crooners and one pug will live stream their 13-city karaoke tour from San Francisco to Montreal. Think of it as a Rental Car Rally with a talent competition or Bullrun Rally with geeks instead of "petrolsexuals."

]]> The group plans on tweeting, blogging, photo blogging and live streaming the event. If you'd like to plan your own wired road trip, here are a few tools that can help you get started:

SHARED TRAVEL PLANNING: Both Tripit and Dopplr are fantastic tools for keeping track of itineraries and sharing travel plans with friends. Meanwhile Gliider is a great tool for saving large blocks of trip-related text and syncing them to offline folders.

gliider from jared richardson on Vimeo.

DIRECTIONS: TeleNav provides GPS services for a number of mobile devices including the iPhone. The tool offers voice driving directions, spoken address recognition, rerouting for accidents and traffic jams, and locates wireless hotspots, the lowest gas prices, parking lots and ATMs. TomTom for iPhone is also expected to be a great tool as the docking station doubles as a charger.

FOOD: Many of us are familiar finding food with the Yelp and Urbanspoon iPhone apps; however, if you want an authentic road trip experience you might want to consult Roadfood. This site lays claim to the "most memorable local eateries along the highways and back roads of America." We get heart palpitations just looking at the heaping plates of pulled pork, burgers and ribs. Meanwhile, if you're looking to picnic with something more healthy and sustainable, Local Harvest's farmer's market finder coupled with the Locavore iPhone app offer users the chance to find local in-season produce. Locallectual offers a similar tool with their iLocavore app.

VIDEOS & PHOTOS: One way to get images up quickly is to stream them directly from your camera. Eye-Fi uses a wireless connection to upload photos and videos directly to your Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and Picassa accounts. If you want to live stream sans touch ups or editing, Eye-Fi is an extremely useful cordless solution. Other mobile streaming video and image options include Qik, Flixwagon, Stickam, Justin.tv and Kyte Producer.

GEO-TAGGING: AroundShare is a mobile application that allows users to publish photos to Google Maps. Meanwhile, Flickr's users can also organize their videos and photos on a map via the site's geo-tagging features. As for geo-based discovery, Flickr mobile utilizes the locational features of the Android and iPhone and allows members to explore public photos from nearby sites.

TRACKING:Google Latitude lets users share their location on a map in real time from their phones or computers. Maps can be embedded in public websites and road trippers appear as moving dots on the map. Imagine your best friend surprising you with Thai food just as you pull up to your hotel. Services like Brightkite and Loopt also broadcast your location; however, these services are based on push notifications rather than real time tracking.

TELLING THE STORY: The Whuffaoke group is using Dipity to aggregate their media. The service allows users to upload their Tweets, blog posts and photo sets to a map, time line and flip book interface. The nice thing about this tool is that it can either be embedded (as seen here) or shared via Facebook, Delicious, StumbleUpon, Reddit or Digg. Other tools to aggregate road trip-related media include JS-Kit's Echo, Disqus or an embedded hashtag feed.

whuffaoke on Dipity.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whuffaoke_or_bust_rwws_road_trip_resources.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whuffaoke_or_bust_rwws_road_trip_resources.php Lists Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:00:00 -0800 Dana Oshiro Yesterday, Google announced a new mobile location-aware application called Latitude, which lets you track your friends' whereabouts using your mobile phone. The move will have major ramifications to the current mobile social networking market which was just beginning to get off the ground. The question we must ask now is this: did Google just validate mobile social networking ...or did they just kill all the competition?

]]> Will Latitude Become the De Facto Mobile Social Network?

With the rise of smartphone-based computing, applications like Brightkite, Loopt, and others were slowly growing their user base, letting friends share posts, photos, and other information with each other as they moved from place to place out in the real world. Accessed via mobile applications or SMS, these sorts of networks provided the framework for connecting people to the places they visit.

However, it was too soon to determine whether mobile social networking was a space that would ever really take off. As studies showed, the social networks that most people accessed on the go were not specialized "mobile" networks, but the usual ones - Facebook and MySpace. Having to recreate a friend graph on new mobile social networks was not something everyone was up for...at least it hadn't been not so far.

Without any easy way to import MySpace and Facebook friends to these newer mobile networks (like via Facebook Connect for example), our mobile social networks were filled only with an odd mix of friends: some early adopters and maybe a handful of tech-obsessed locals. But that being said, the networks still had potential assuming they could have ever gotten over the initial hump to gather critical mass. They were offering something unique, and that boded well for them. Being able to tune into the world around you and see who was there, who had been there, and what was going on was a type of augmented reality that was never possible before the advent of modern mobile computing.

Google's Potential to Dominate

Now that Google has come onto the scene, friend graphs already intact, one has to wonder about the impact this will have on these smaller networks. How will they survive? Google is already a mainstream service and Latitude was just covered by the Wall Street Journal. Needless to say, any mainstream users out there intrigued by mobile social networking will now just go try Google's service.

Yet where the smaller networks had the cozy feel of you and handful of friends, any service maintained by a behemoth such as Google immediately has a "Big Brother" feel to it. No matter how many opt-out features and privacy controls they offer, some people just won't be able to shake that feeling that Google is just a little too omnipresent in our lives. But will "fear of Google" alone be enough to keep people from leaving the small mobile networks in favor of the larger one?

According to Martin May, Brightkite founder, though, Google didn't even come close to killing his service. "With Brightkite," he says, "we are primarily focused making meaningful connections with people you didn't necessarily know yet, around places. Latitude seems focused on showing you where your existing friends are at. Functionality-wise, Latitude does very little beyond sharing a latitude, longitude and accuracy with friends at the moment." But even May admits that may change down the road.

Wait...Our Real Friends Aren't on Google

What's strange about the mobile social networking market, though, are the missing players. The major missing players. Where is Facebook? Where is MySpace? Why is it that the biggest social networks on the planet have decidedly shunned any attempt to add proximity and mapping to their mobile services?

If anything our real friends are here, not on Google, whose friend network includes random people from our Gmail accounts, interesting folks from our RSS readers, and the occasional visitors to our blogs (thanks to the Google Friend Connect widget). Those may be people who we work with, people who wanted to share feeds with us, or fellow bloggers, but they aren't necessarily our real-life friends. And since they're not, why on earth would we want to share our locations with them?

The ability to connect to all our real-life, real-world friends and family - friends that include mainstream web users, mom, dad, and the kids - is something that just isn't here yet. No matter which mobile social network you end up using, including Google's, you're only going to see a slice of your actual social network. A true mobile social network would integrate friends from all the major social networks we participate in, plus our bevy of work colleagues from the social network hidden in our email, and, for all those non-participants out there, it would let us add them via their mobile phone number. But that really would be creepy, so we sort of hope it never happens.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/did_google_just_kill_all_the_other_mobile_social_networks.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/did_google_just_kill_all_the_other_mobile_social_networks.php Trends Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:49:50 -0800 Sarah Perez According to a rather speculative report by research firm ABI Research, location-based social networks like Brightkite, GyPSii, Pelago and Loopt could reach revenues as high as $3.3 billion by 2013. The report, however, also warns that the business models might differ from what most analysts are expecting today. According to ABI research, most of these networks will make their money from licensing and revenue-sharing with network providers or handset manufacturers.

]]> Nokia, for example, acquired Plazes a month ago, while GyPSii has deals in place with Garmin and Samsung. Loopt, too, has partnered with virtually all the major US mobile carriers.

Still Limited

While we have little doubt that mobile social networking will become a big market in the future, today's reality is still rather bleak. Because of the limitations in the current hardware and software implementations, a lot of the location-based social networks like Loopt, WhosHere, Pelago's Whrrl, and others feel limited and at times rather gimmicky.

Also, most of these networks simply suffer from the fact that they don't have many users and that the chances of finding any of your friends on them are relatively low for now.

What About the Established Networks?

In the near future, mobile social networking is only really going to grow once the big social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, or MyYearBook start releasing location-aware applications for mobile devices.

Overall, we don't put too much stock into the ABI report. Thanks to highly targeted location-based advertising, there is a good chance that a mobile social network that manages to attract enough users (or any of the already establish social networks that releases a location aware application) will be able to be financially successful. For right now, however, with a market that is barely establish, trying to put a number on the potential success of these networks is almost silly.

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/location_based_social_networking_3_billion.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/location_based_social_networking_3_billion.php News Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:52:18 -0800 Frederic Lardinois The iPhone App Store has just gone live and one of the apps getting early attention is Loopt, a location aware mobile social network startup we profiled in June. Loopt enables users to broadcast their status to a broad set of services and find interesting locations and reviews nearby. Their latest release for the iPhone integrates microblogging and reviews from Yelp into its interface. According to founder Sam Altman, Loopt is using the iPhone's rich media platform to pilot new features and services before they filter their way into other mobile phones.

]]> Loopt status updates can now be published to Facebook and Twitter accounts the user has linked to; other services like FriendFeed can also be updated via an RSS feed of Loopt statuses that the service exports. For iPhone users at least, Loopt updates will show up as tweets on Twitter, as status message updates on Facebook, and as new statuses on FriendFeed.

In addition, Loopt aggregates local content to provide a map view of great places and star ratings. As Loopt adds more content partners besides Yelp, the various review and events sites will be mashed up for users. The iPhone map interface comes in handy here, as scrolling around and zooming in with two fingers is substantially faster and more intuitive than on other platforms. This screenshot shows the feature in action, where users can find quick overviews of locations nearby and click in to read more Yelp reviews about specific places.

Despite how slick the iPhone interface is, Loopt does not yet allow users to write reviews on Yelp from inside the application. Finding this feature lacking, Sam pointed out that users can still make their voices heard through Loopt updates, but this seemed more a concession than an optimal solution. It doesn't make a lot of sense to write reviews as, say, Twitter messages, when the reviews users find on Loopt come from Yelp. Loopt potentially could have brought together both the content from Yelp and the means to write live reviews on the site. Also, Yelp information will only be available to Loopt users on the iPhone. This release falls short of the full range of possibilities of pushing and pulling content from review sites, but presumably this will be addressed in future releases.

Beyond the iPhone: the Road Ahead

This release points to a few interesting possibilities location-based services like Loopt could offer with content partners. It's easy to imagine a platform of reviews, ratings, and preferences indexed by location. As the platform evolves, it could be possible to find not just content about events and places but content from users actually at those areas as events unfold. Finding out about nearby events, even when not advertised, may only be a matter of searching for interesting things in the chatter of a location aware universe.

There are also some novel monetization opportunities. Loopt recently partnered with CBS to deliver location aware ads. Stores and restaurants could, in theory, use the same platform as users do to publish coupons and event notices, creating buzz to attract nearby customers. Location aware advertising in conjunction with location aware user content could become a live directory of what's happening where. The company could take this even further by intelligently suggesting new places and events to users, leveraging their growing local content store and personalization data.

Many others also share that vision. Google seems to have abandoned their Dodgeball acquisition, but they could reinvest in this space and leverage the hundreds of millions of Google accounts in conjunction with the technology that Dodgeball provided. Kleiner Perkins-funded Pelago are also releasing their competing product, Whrrl, onto the iPhone; Boston-based ULocate does more or less the same thing as Loopt and also has deals with AT&T. Even Sense Networks which formerly focused more on aggregating macro-scale GPS information is getting in on the action with heatmaps showing hot nightlife locales.

As the mobile space moves toward platforms like the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Mobile, we should expect the space to start seriously heating up. Much of the effort Loopt spent in their earlier years forging phone pre-installation deals with carriers will become less strategic as consumers adopt platforms. Loopt is banking heavily on the network effect they've built up from past deals with Boost, Sprint, and Verizon and developing new, useful features that will attract enough users to pass the tipping point.

Regardless, this is a space that will eventually be developed, be it by Loopt or by someone else. For now, their iPhone release has some interesting features, but only hints at some of the possibilities the service could offer. As the market matures, the vision of connecting users to places and events via both content and location will no doubt play a key role in the emerging mobile services market. Whether Loopt will take advantage of their platform and their current head start or be swallowed by competitors - only time will tell.

Here's a video from our earlier post:

This has been a guest post by Nate Janewit. You can find him online at FriendFeed and Twitter.

Loopt

]]> Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/loopt_iphone3g.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/loopt_iphone3g.php Product Reviews Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:35:05 -0800 Guest Author