Dave Allen
Dave Allen. Director, Interactive Strategy

The problem with location technology is us

posted by , 12 Comments

Foursquare location services NORTH Portland

We live in a bubble. And by we, I mean those of us who either work in disciplines that require us to keep up with technological knowledge on behalf of our clients, or who are early adopters: and young.

I was reading a NY Times article this morning on how Google, Foursquare, Gowalla, Shopkick and most recently Facebook, all offer services that let people report their physical location online. And smelling the money, venture capitalists began pouring $115 million into location start-ups since last year.

The problem is that you need a decent smartphone or similar device to access these services and although there are millions of them in people’s hands, most of them don’t want to share their location. It’s the old ‘you can lead the horse to water…etc’ conundrum. [Update: It has been pointed out to me that you can use SMS for checking in to Foursquare on non-smartphones. Yes, I live in a bubble.]

The article points out that “just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.”

Then there’s the problem of the over-hyping of these services in tech media. As Maggie Fox, the founder and CEO of Social Media Group, writes in her post – Foursquare – Shiny Object or Mainstream?:

“Over the weekend, Foursquare scored a major coup via a new partnership with American Eagle: they got their name and logo plastered all over Times Square. The first story I saw on the subject was on Mashable, where blogger Samuel Axon noted,

“It seems like just a short time ago that these location services were only used by a few hardcore web tech geeks. Now they’re so mainstream that they’re taking up a chunk of the New York skyline.”

Um. No.

Foursquare has just over three million users and you need a smartphone to use it. It is far, far from “mainstream”. And the article in Mashable feels like something I’ve been seeing a lot of lately – mistaking a brand using a niche and emerging web service [the “shiny object” in the title of this post] as a way of positioning themselves as cool and hep, for some sort of validation of something as “mainstream”.

In the end, the pundits predict, the battle over who wins the location game will be between Google, Foursquare and Facebook. Unfortunately, at the moment, Foursquare doesn’t have the users nor the financial muscle to escape the Google/Facebook sandwich. And all these companies have to make location service use mainstream – somehow.

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Comments

12 Responses to “The problem with location technology is us”

  1. J-lon
    August 30th, 2010 @ 10:33 am

    Um, in point of fact, you don’t need a smart phone to use 4 Square. The experience is certainly better if you have a smart phone, but you can check in and receive updates from people via SMS.

    That being said, I haven’t found 4 Square particularly useful for me (at least most of the time). If more of my friends had been on it down at SXSW, that would have been useful. And if I was younger and had more friends who were out and about on a regular basis in a larger city like NYC or Chicago, I think that would be useful too, as a way of finding folks to hang out with on a night where I didn’t make a advance plans. Younger folks may also have more time to engage in the competitive game aspect of 4 Square.

    But I don’t generally need to know that Sally Jones is at the Safeway or Walgreens, and for the friends I have on 4 Square a lot of the updates have been of that nature. So I turned off the pings.

    I also stopped checking in, because I didn’t really see much of point to it. But once again, that may be more about the adopter issue, where if more of my core community was on there, it would become more useful.

  2. Dave Allen
    August 30th, 2010 @ 10:48 am

    Thanks for the correction re smartphones..as you can tell, I live in a bubble with my iPhone..! I’ll update the post..

  3. Chauncey
    August 30th, 2010 @ 11:12 am

    As a fellow tech-guru, I think they could be very useful but in a very limited niche, like the old Dodgeball service — when trying to assemble a group of people together at a nebulous location or one that is changing throughout the evening (a la bar-hopping). I think it would be great at a music festival like SxSW or MFNW where there can be dozens of shows going on at once at different venues, and you’re curious which friends are where. Other than that, most usage strikes me as useless narcissism or an outright invitation for someone to burgle one’s abode.

  4. Dave Allen
    August 30th, 2010 @ 11:17 am

    Chauncey, yes I agree. Actually Foursquare had its moment in the spotlight at SXSW last year, following on Twitter’s coattails from the previous year I believe. The “burgle one’s abode” issue and other personal security worries are what will keep this tech from exploding I believe. I could be wrong.

  5. jim carey
    August 30th, 2010 @ 12:02 pm

    Wow. And I thought had to be on parole to get fitted with a tracking device.

  6. Dina Nishioka
    August 30th, 2010 @ 12:48 pm

    Thank you Dave,
    Sometimes, we get so caught up in what the “newest” thing is that we jump on the bandwagon without perspective. Appreciate the perspective. Missed you @hotel_lucia Tweet up!

  7. Dave Allen
    August 30th, 2010 @ 4:26 pm

    Dina, yes you’re right we do get caught up in it. And it’s good to come up for air sometimes..and I’ll be at the next @hotel_ Tweet up

  8. Justin Spohn
    August 30th, 2010 @ 5:58 pm

    I don’t know. I think we all might be moving a little quickly to identify a problem just to have a problem.

    I mean, first of all, I’m not sure location services DO need to be mainstream. Plenty of technology is highly productive and highly profitable without becoming ubiquitous. I’m unsure when the bar for technology became “every single person in the world loves it”

    Second, 4% of Americans is a pretty huge install base for a concept that is only a couple years old. Let’s remember – 4% of the US is like 12 million people. I’m not sure one could call that a failure at this stage.

    Third, I think most of the issues we believe we’re seeing with location technology is a result of dumb marketers and even dumber ad industry journalists. The agency echo chamber is obsessed with declaring things either the ultimate panacea for a chronically ill industry, or totally irrelevant when they can’t sell advertising on it.

  9. Dave Allen
    August 30th, 2010 @ 7:38 pm

    Justin,

    Yes, all good points. But Foursquare does seem to need to stop treading water..does the American Eagle deal move the needle for them? Maybe. Also I don’t think there’s a “failure” message in the articles, just a “hey it’s to soon to say they’re about to jump the shark” sentiment aimed at the dumb ad industry journos as you point out.

    And you’re right, they can certainly be profitable in the niche they carve out. But don’t they run the risk of remaining niche when Facebook is mainstream and attracting online users like flies? In other words, how do they keep and get more attention?

  10. Justin Spohn
    August 31st, 2010 @ 9:51 am

    Well – are we talking about Foursquare or location based services? Foursquare may well go down – having no insights into their business plans, they seem to be tying themselves heavily to advertisers, which I suspect will not serve them long term.

    If we’re talking about location services broadly, then whether or not Foursquare survives is probably irrelevant.

  11. rebecca
    August 31st, 2010 @ 11:09 am

    Am checking in to NORTH on Foursquare as I type.

  12. Dave Allen
    August 31st, 2010 @ 11:43 am

    Justin,

    I think we’re discussing the broader location services. Foursquare just seems to be the most mentioned after Facebook amongst the tech media journos. For instance, I’m not convinced that Facebook Places is that compelling either but these things take time so we’ll see where it all goes.

    I’m totally behind the idea of location awareness, I suppose I’m just looking for its application that is meaningful to me personally..

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