Comments on: Do Location Apps Need to Show Users the Money?

By: Thomas Cornelius

Thomas Cornelius — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:40:08 +0000

Dave – great conversation that you started for a lot of companies. Did you check out http://www.dealwerk.com yet, where you can get business deal content as simple through an API as simpleGeo provides geo stacks?

By: Thomas Cornelius

Thomas Cornelius — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 16:44:29 +0000

We have just launched “dealwerk.com” to provide developers and publishers coupons and prepaid cards in all major markets in the US via API, platform, etc. for use in their geo apps, lb services, etc.

First clients include coupons.com, centerd.com, adblade.com and a few more.

NOBODY has to build their own sales team, we do it for them and get them local content – and let the content flow like water through dealwerk API, dailydeal sites, etc. so that developers can focus on building dailydeal apps, lbs/ checkin apps, etc. and even more important on dealing with the consumer and build a great experience for consuemrs. Let the best apps and consumer sites win, but don’t make the mistake Mr. app developer to get into the SMB sales business – you will get crushed and never reach scalability!

Check the release here about dealwerk: http://bit.ly/cjM3lP (a day before Dave’s post – how timely).

As a present example – there is groupon and 150 single city groupon wannabes, BUT no wannabe can scale their local 2 man sales show with SMBs to a national gig with products in every city….now with “dealwerk” everybody can – same for LBS, geo apps, etc.

By: Peter Braun

Peter Braun — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 06:28:19 +0000

Location-based advertising is a prime example of LBS value. The stores and restaurants are there and want to reveal their location and special offers to grab the passersby. Consumers want to take advantage of those offers and they do not have to reveal their location. The phone (and apps on it, with consumers’ permission) knows where they are and serves the ad / offer.
People show a lot of their personal information on social networking sites without being paid. There are other benefits why they do it (and make those sites winners). Same with location – it just needs to be worthwhile (or perceived as such).

By: Sanjay Maharaj

Sanjay Maharaj — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 19:09:20 +0000

I agree, how long before we loss interest in check ins, we need to see tangible results and offers made to the user as an incentive to continue using location based services. If I frequent a location and always check in and know that a special offer or discount will come my way, I will continue to us the location based service religiously. Then it will be a win win for all. Although there is more to location based services, enticing users will probably keep them engaged into the future

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 03:28:52 +0000

Good points, Clint. I think your experience is probably shared by many non-geeks and non-Valley types. Thanks for the comment.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 03:26:41 +0000

Thanks, Dave -- and I think you framed the discussion pretty well. Nice use of fonts too, as usual :-)

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 03:24:59 +0000

Thanks, Phil -- I will definitely read the report. And you are quite right that there is more to location than just check-ins. Thanks for the comment.

By: Phil Jeudy

Phil Jeudy — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:17:59 +0000

I’ve been working for almost 3 years in Europe in Mobile Gaming, from 2005 to 2007, for a big publisher. At those times, we were watching mobile phones market as golden mine (it was Java games mostly), because we were assuming that everybody would be ready to buy games for few money.
Wrong!
For 2 main reasons:
- technologic issues (download process, quality of games vs price), strong barriers!
- consumer mechanism : what would make people be regular buyer of mobile games? Marketing campaign, price strategy have been poorly applied, now iPhone has changed the rules, but it remains a niche market. And just a few companies competing there.
Now we come to the same situation: everybody understood that this mobile phone (mostly smartphone, mostly iPhone) can be used in some mobile situation for some purposes.
Obviously to me location base service and gaming are just short term considerations, and what can you do when you finally realized you obsessively update for no other reasons than “I’m here” or “I’m the new Mayor”?
Why nobody mentions usually MyTown from Booyah! and its 1.6 Millions users, which is significantly much more than Foursquare, and maybe Gowalla included?! They are clearly in the gaming stream and they do it well. And you know what you’re doing there: you play!
Silicon Valley needs more companies to succeed than Twitter for sure, but Location applications need much more than to show the money to get traction. They need to be useful, like Yelp in the US, or TellMeWhere or Qype in Europe.
Or they will go through the same destiny than mobile games. And the value of those company won’t be reaching this $100 Millions for sure!

By: Clint Sharp

Clint Sharp — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:00:36 +0000

I agree with Dave. Perhaps it's because I live outside of the Valley and see that adoption rates outside are much much slower. Seriously, Foursquare is a ghost town and I live in Denver, which is a fairly progressive town in terms of technology savvy. Every place I go to check-in, I have to add, which seriously detracts from the enjoyment of the application (lots of work), and there's not a lot of community around the application if I'm basically the only user I've ever seen at nearly every location I checkin at. The other detraction is that I'm required to build yet another friends list (why does it not just use Facebook's?). I've all but stopped checking in because I guess I just don't get the point of it. I always try to get behind the latest trends I see coming out of the Valley because I think they will at some point affect my life (I work in Telecom and we're one of those companies that carries the traffic for these applications), but this is one I'm just not getting.

By: Dave McClure

Dave McClure — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:00:41 +0000

clarification: i'm not saying check-ins are nonsense / game mechanics don't matter... just that they become much more powerful with a (small) financial incentive.

regardless, it's going to take some serious capital to acquire critical mass of users & businesses, and the road to success still goes thru Facebook, imho.

nice piece mathew.