Gowalla 3.0 Integrates With Major Social Media Outlets

With the release of version 3.0, Gowalla has taken the lead in location based services as “the richest virtual check-in application available”. According to their CEO, Josh Williams, v3.0 is meant to begin reshaping the company into “a socially curated guidebook”, or in other words become a portable summary of things to do, informed by the opinions of your friends and connections on the Gowalla social network. This is a significant pivot for the LBS provider because up to this point they had appeared to be losing ground to Facebook Places, Twitter and Foursquare with regard to user base; this new version will allow Gowalla users to share and aggregate information across these different platforms and provide an “application-agnostic” location based check-in service for consumers. This shift is particularly relevant for retailers to take note of because it represents a major opportunity for them to begin generating brand and store awareness across all of these social media platforms simultaneously. The net effect for these manufacturers and merchants should be an ever-accelerated sharing of data from a consumer to their group of friends and followers, allowing customer reviews, thoughts and opinions to move across the spectrum of virtual friendship at unprecedented speeds. As unbelievable as it may sound, this release of Gowalla 3.0 means that information sharing via the internet and social media just got even faster!

Facebook Adds Deals in Effort to Make Places App Relevant

Looking for ways to increase their penetration in Location Based Services (LBS), Facebook announced yesterday that they’ve added an application called Deals to their platform. Currently only 4% of online adult Americans use LBS applications to let their friends know where they are throughout the day. As an incentive, Facebook has teamed with 21 businesses (so far) to offer deals to users who check-in to certain locations around their cities; Gap is offering  a free pair of blue jeans to the first 10,000 people who check-in at a Gap location on November 5, 2010; Macy’s is giving shoppers 20% off for checking in; REI, Starbucks and 24 Hour Fitness are all offering to donate money to various charities for every check-in at their locations. These rewards are clearly more pragmatic and meaningful than the badges and titles that users on Gowalla and Foursquare have competed for up to now, and should provide greater incentive for the general public to at least start considering the use of LBS. Ultimately, Facebook needs to remove as many barriers-to-use of this LBS functionality as possible; the most powerful delivery method of these rewards will be the user simply collecting and storing their credits in a digital wallet, as opposed to “proving” that they’ve checked in to a store clerk before they can claim their discount at the point of sale. The user could then simply check-in at various locations and the store would instantly recognize their account and provide discounts automatically. What do you think about Location Based Services? Do you use them currently? Would you check-in for a free pair of Gap blue jeans?

Facebook Enters Location Based App Space With ‘Places’

Facebook announced yesterday that they have officially entered the LBS market with their release of ‘Places’, which is expected to compete immediately with the business models of Foursquare and Gowalla. Largely built on Microsoft’s Bing Maps architecture, this release is also a threat to Google’s dominance in the map-based application space. “Check-in Fatigue”, a phrase that has become more and more common recently, seems to be the biggest hurdle ahead of these LBS providers; convincing current users to keep interacting and enticing new users to join will depend on a combination of the relationships these companies are able to build with brands and retailers, and the resulting benefits or discounts that are tied to frequenting each location. Another major hang-up are privacy concerns, and although Facebook promises to have put major development effort behind improving these issues, many users remain skeptical. The ACLU of Northern California has been one of the first groups to step forward on the current issue, saying that “Facebook made some changes to its regular privacy practices to protect sensitive location-based information, such as limiting the default visibility of check-ins on your feed to ‘Friends Only.’ But it has failed to build in some other important privacy safeguards. In the world of Facebook Places, ‘no’ is unfortunately not an option. Places allows your friends to tag you when they check in somewhere, and Facebook makes it very easy to say ‘yes’ to allowing your friends to check in for you. But when it comes to opting out of that feature, you are only given a ‘not now’ option (aka ask me again later).” This has been raised as a key issue in the past with Facebook apps, and their management are adamant that with ‘Places’ these problems with user privacy have been solved with the use of “opt-in” functionality. All privacy issues aside, Facebook has just entered a new space with over 500 million active users in tow, which compares to a little over 2 million currently on Foursquare. If they are able to combine the Facebook social experience with meaningful rewards for LBS users, then we have entered a whole new realm of social media where monetizing a user base just became a whole lot simpler.

Location Based Apps Are Cool, But What Are They Good For?

As location-based services like Foursquare and Gowalla gain more and more users, and the coverage of retailer’s using these services grows apace (the PR guys and tech media are really showing nice symbiosis here), the long-term challenge for retailers remains sustained differentiation. These services may be creating buzz and driving short-term results, but when everyone has the same access to the same tools, it’’s unclear how meaningful the technology really is in producing results.

If the goal of the marketer is to achieve short-term objectives, all is well and good. A friend of the company once reminded us that discounting can drive behavior, but doesn’t produce long-term brand relationships; that’’s where the hard work is, and it’’s work that can’’t be compressed into a weekend promotion. While it’’s fun and interesting to have short-term projects around some of these new technologies, whether the important long-term results can be achieved is an open question.

It’’s surely worth pursuing the experiments and running the campaigns to see how LBS (location based services) can work, and we’’re all watching them with great interest. But if they’’re offering the same thing to everyone, and unable to fit coherently into a broader strategy aimed at sustainable brand engagement, they risk being marginalized over time as an interesting but ultimately unproductive distraction.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare

Very cool info in this interview with Gowalla CEO Josh Williams, discussing social media context, viral advertising and the battle for relevance in location-based marketing.

Mobile Phones as the New Loyalty Cards

Consumers are increasingly signing up for mobile social media platforms like Gowalla, Foursquare and Loopt to take advantage of new ways to meet up with friends and be rewarded by brands/retailers. As these applications become more pervasive, many elements of daily life like buying coffee and running errands should begin to look and feel more like a game. This is a very important development for advertisers because until now it has been impossible to accomplish one-to-one, real-time marketing, but with location based social media it may soon become a reality.

Android/PayPal Payments

The Android is now compatible with PayPal’s Bump technology and users can simply tap their mobile phones together to exchange payments with one another. It will be interesting to see if social media sites such as Foursquare or Gowalla are able to leverage this technology to improve their user-experience/attract incremental advertising dollars.