Facebook Places Signs Big Retailers To Offer Deals

When social giant Facebook announced it's move into location based services it had to cause some nerves to fray at Gowolla and Foursquare, the two biggest players in the arena until Facebook joined the game. Now Facebook has partnered with 22 major brands likes Gap, H&M, Starbucks, McDonalds and the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas. In fact Gap plans to run a campaign in which the first 10,000 Gap customers to sign in at their local store will receive a free pair of jeans. This is the type of game changer that will draw attention to location based services in a market that is teetering on being ready to enjoy it's benefits and dispel the detractors. It will be interesting to see if the smaller innovators are able to grow as the result of their superior technologies or if the elephant in the room will simply plow forward using it's mass and momentum. I've resisted Facebook's Places opting to stay with Foursquare, but local business is slow to embrace the technology in this small (physical) community and I fear Facebook will gain more attention simply because it is a more recognizable brand that shop keepers are much more familiar with.

Source: BBC

Facebook Places - Good For Location Based Services?

A recent report from Forrester Research suggests that only 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and that 1 percent use them weekly. The numbers also indicate that users of the service generally live in urban areas and are very tech savvy. “Ever since mobile phones and location technology got started, there have been conversations about the potential for doing something really incredible with this for marketers,” said Melissa Parrish, an interactive marketing analyst at Forrester. “But clearly the question is whether it has reached the mainstream, and it looks like the answer is no.” I think that I would also add, a big... not yet!

“Clearly location is not yet mainstream — it’s still a younger-demographic phenomenon — but if anyone can change it, Facebook will,” said Sam Altman, chief executive of Loopt. I'm inclined to agree with Mr. Altman. Consider how many many of your elder family members and friends who might have ever tried video games, now think of how many Facebook messages you receive regarding Farmville, Mafia Wars, and the like... who are the people associated with these requests? If your Facebook timeline looks like mine, it's the older less than technical folk. Additionally, while this is a very small sampling, my 16 year old asked me about foursquare recently. He, as you can imagine is truly tuned into technology and while he and his friends have largely shunned Twitter, foursquare has caught there attention and they are after all the Facebook generation.

In my mind it is business, large and small, that have to take the lead and make location based services more than a game that is played between tech savvy friends, and they will, over time. I can't imagine that phone manufacturers will start abandoning location, nor do I imagine that location based services will give up and go away. It's but a matter of time before we see the real value that location holds and when we do, look out.   

Source: nytimes.com

Facebook Places - foursquare And Gowalla On Board?

Last night Facebook announced it's entry into location based services and the giant offered foursquare and Gowalla a chance to sing the praises of "Places" and it's api. There had been a lot of speculation of late that Facebook may have been in the market to acquire one of these smaller players or that their entry would simply squash them out of existence. The move, at least on the surface, of making places an open api for the smaller companies to hang their code onto is either an olive branch or perhaps a trial balloon. In any event it will be interesting to see how this plays out and if being a feeder for Facebook (they will consume data driven from foursquare and Gowalla but not offer anything in the other direction) helps to accelerate the growth of these services. If the later is true, I hope they can keep up with the Facebook affect!

foursquare Superuser To The Rescue!

An honor has been bestowed upon me, one that I really hadn't realized that I had received until I was comparing accounts on foursquare.com with a few co-workers. It seems that I am a Superuser and with this comes super powers... well not really but I am able to help foursquare maintain their data regarding their venues. Dare i say it? "With great power comes great responsibility"... you knew I would!

So, what is a Superuser and how do you become one? (like a lot of foursquares's badges they are quite secretive about how to achieve them). We were able to do a quick Google search and ascertain the following: 

"Superusers are regular users who’ve been hand selected by the Foursquare staff to help maintain the venue database.

There are two types of superusers, Level 1 and Level 2. Level 1 superusers have the ability to edit any venue, including name, address, map pin location and tags. They can also suggest duplicate venues to be merged and mark venues as closed.

Level 2 superusers have all the abilities of a Level 1 superuser, but they can also complete merges suggested by other superusers and add categories to venues. To merge venues, they use a special interface that shows both venues to be merged. They can choose which information to keep from each venue page, but they cannot choose which map pin should be kept. This is why it’s important to choose the location with the best map pin when suggesting venues to be merged.

A Level 3 superuser option exists which allows those superusers to create and remove venue aliases. Due to the potential for abuse, however, this level has never been awarded is only awarded very rarely." http://aboutfoursquare.com/faq-what-is-a-superuser/

The biggest issue I've had with foursquare to date is that I can be standing in the doorway of a venue and be told that I'm hundreds of meters away, I always just chalked that up to my phone or provider but now I am able to see and correct the issue for all foursquare players and the power in the universe has shifted on the side of good! May the foursquare be with you. (Sorry, but I crack me up some times.)

Foursquare Raises $20,000,000 Round B Financing

The one and a half year old location-based social sensation Foursquare has just secured a $20 million Series B investment led by VCs Andreessen Horowitz, with Union Square Ventures and O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures also participating. According to Business Insider:

• Foursquare can finally start working on its product again after moving a lot of resources to building out its infrastructure, which was crumbling after its huge growth.

• Foursquare can finally start hiring again because it's moving into bigger offices. Before, it couldn't physically put more people in the room.

• For the forseeable future, Foursquare will continue to be one main app -- not a bunch of apps for different purposes.

The deal values the company at $95 million pre-financing.

We have several players in our office and the competition is really heating up... Congrats Foursquare! We look forward to seeing more great stuff now that you've got the money behind you.