Photo by .schill from Flickr used under Creative Commons
Wow, geo is a hot topic lately, with coverage, announcements and features dropping every day.
Here’s a summary of what I’ve seen lately that caught my interest:
- Gowalla appears to be preparing an API.
- MyTown has 500,000 users, even though no one talks about it.
- Yelp is adding location checkins to the next version of its iPhone app.
- Eric Butler (@firerabbit) built a sweet foursquare app for OS X called FoursquareX.
I like all this activity because it means innovation in geo, and the release of APIs for geo-services means development, which means cool apps. It’s like mid-2007 for Twitter.
Competition among services is also good for users. Remember Jaiku and Pownce? Probably not. They taught us that the network mattered, which is why we all stayed with Twitter despite its downtime issues.
Geo services don’t turn out to be as social as people expect (one of my 2010 predictions), so to attract users, services need to be engaging and fun, the main reason I’ve stayed with foursquare.
Sure, Gowalla has game mechanics based around the exchange of virtual goods, but I haven’t really found that to be engaging yet. They have a beautiful app, but I don’t see myself playing long term unless the game changes.
I’ve played a little MyTown too, and its game mechanics are solid, i.e. you accrue money to buy properties and collect money. There are also levels to the game.
So far, it’s fun, but lonely. I know, I did say geo isn’t as social as people think, but without a little social goodness, it’s just not as fun, e.g. I want to taunt people I know when they have to pay me rent.
This leads me to the biggest and most interesting news of late. Yelp is getting into the geo game by adding the ability to checkin to venues.
Yelp boasts 1.25 million users and loads of user-generated content. It’s extremely popular among its users and was hot enough to be a recently rumored target for acquisition by Google.
Not too shabby.
While I’m not a Yelp user, I know it’s well-liked, and I can see why their entry into geo is viewed as a threat to services like foursquare and Gowalla. I wonder though.
I wonder if Yelp will be able to convince its loyal users to checkin. After all, Yelp’s core value is its user reviews, which work best when they’re viewed as authentic. Whether they are authentic or not is a hotly debated topic.
Yelp’s core service is reviews and comments on reviews, not social features and not geo features.
So will Yelp users, many of which will not be familiar with services like foursquare use that feature? Beyond the obvious ability to get a “Regular” badge for repeat visits, Yelp hasn’t fleshed out much about the game mechanics of checkins.
As with foursquare, the assumption is that regulars would receive discounts from the merchant, but this would seem to taint the impartial nature of any review done by a regular, further adding to the storm around the veracity of Yelp’s reviews.
Also, there’s the real-time problem of checking in and writing a bad review, which removes the veil of autonomy that some use on Yelp. Merchants get upset about bad reviews on Yelp, and adding real-time to that equation could end in tears. Just saying.
Yelp will be an interesting test for geo, and one that Facebook will likely watch with interest. Though it released its geo-tagging of tweets months ago, Twitter has yet to see much uptake of the new service.
With geo services debuting APIs, I wonder how long before someone builds a checkin app that can check you in to all these services at once and update all the other location-based apps.
And while we’re on the subject, I wonder why Fire Eagle, the location broker, is never mentioned? Were they too early to the game, or does the open model just not work?
Wonder what the future holds for Fire Eagle as Yahoo evolves.
Anyway, find the comments to add your thoughts on geo and these services.
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