Location-Based App Report Card
Posted by Matt Story | June 1, 2010
After a nice long Memorial Day weekend ushered in the summer, students across the country are taking that last set of finals in hopes of maintaining good grades or bumping up those so-so grades. With the spirit of report cards in the air, I thought it was a good time to give out a report card of sorts to the latest social media/mobile/application craze, location-based apps.
In lieu of grades, I’m taking a more general approach of commenting on: The Good, The Bad, and My Wish. Now bring on the judgment.
BrightKite
The Good: It brings wide range of social media features (e.g. post comments, privacy options, direct messages) to the basic check-in play. These features make for the best ability to communicate one-to-one of the competitive set.
The Bad: Doesn’t provide any addictive features that require you to come back (e.g. badges, points).
My Wish: More friends would join the service to leverage the social features.
FourSquare
The Good: A PR machine at this point. In addition to the badge and mayorship hording, developers are beginning to develop third party applications (e.g. Meet Gatsby) for the teacher’s pet of the category which is always a good sign. Major advertisers (e.g. Starbucks) are “checking-in” to the experience as well. Mayorships actually beginning to mean something in the real world. The most genius feature may be “Off-the-Grid” option which protects privacy which is the largest concern with these apps.
The Bad: With reportedly more than 15,000 people joining daily, the service has seen recent hiccups which is similar to the growing pains experienced by other social media upstarts. These hiccups are felt more so with FourSquare because mayorships and badges are at stake.
My Wish: The points/leaderboard would be fixed to actually mean something. A big opportunity to play up game angle here.
Gowalla
The Good: The GUI is beautiful (e.g. visual representation of venues/locations visited via passport). Collecting/Dropping items make for tough decisions but fun to follow the history of items. Trips are a great way to drive user behavior. Similar to FourSquare, partnerships (e.g. National Geographic and The Washington Post) have been smart and well thought out.
The Bad: The GPS tends to get wonky making the experience painful. Adding locations without using addresses can lead to many duplicates depending on the venue type. The notifications can become overwhelming at times depending on how long you go between log-ins.
My Wish: The ability to swap items with friends or even create my own item.
MyTown
The Good: A true game built around check-ins. It requires actual strategy when selecting which venues to own. The addictive features of collecting rent and daily scratch-offs that yield you points and cash.
The Bad: The game overshadows the actual location-based features and doesn’t really change over time.
My Wish: As a gamer at heart, application available on more platforms than just iPhone. Android please!?!
PlacePop
The Good: Provides overall status awards for the individual places users frequents. Elegantly simple userface that populates twitter and Yelp! feeds for places. PlacePop is stripped down to basic check-in functions, minimizing the gaming aspects. Ability to follow others without friending (could be seen as a bad thing as well).
The Bad: A large amount of emails with updates and suggesting people to follow.
My Wish: The ability to add new places. More platforms than just iPhone.
SCVNGR
The Good: Great interface that incorporates point system (for besting your friends on the leaderboard) that goes past the typical check-in. The use of a status line and pictures keeps you engaged and treks hint at the potential of never-ending real world scavenger hunts.
The Bad: Majority of places are not populated in the listings and it appears the simple dump of google listings (leveraged by competitors) was skipped. It currently lacks a web experience to compliment the mobile on-the-go fun. Adding friends is nearly impossible and requires significant effort which makes the “sharing is caring” potential limited at best.
My Wish: There were more differentiations between a general status update and a tip that would be useful to the community. There is potential to reward additional points for useful tips rated by the community.
Yelp
The Good: Built on top of a well established experience. Obviously extensive user submitted information, recommendations, and built in audience.
The Bad: Built on top of a well established experience. It feels very much like a me-too after thought.
My Wish: Bubble up the check-ins to a larger emphasis for the app.
Those apps receiving incompletes due to limited exposure or audiences: Loopt, Societies, and Whrrl.
The entire landscape could be turned upside down when Facebook makes its highly anticipated entry into this space. With the largest digital footprint, Facebook seems like it has the opportunity to lead the market from day one. As a location-based application fanboy, I’ll be watching closely to see what apps make the necessary changes to move to the front of the class as others get held back or worse yet drop out all together.
Special Thanks (I’d give them a badge if I had one to give) to and for their help in gathering details for this post.
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