Comments on: Vote: Will Europeans use Gowalla, FourSquare or what?

By: mugwumpman

mugwumpman — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 09:15:00 +0000

There usually emerges a 3rd party app that enables several of these similar social programs to be linked together. Is there any such website/program/app for Location Based Social Networks, (4square, Fbook places, Gowalla etc.) also linking them with Google map’s recommendation/rating system? If not, why not? I would love to make one, but haven’t the technical skills.

By: MPB

MPB — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:05:54 +0000

Zurich is missing in your list…

By: Roger Nolan

Roger Nolan — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 05:28:32 +0000

Ooops. link: http:flook.it/comp

By: Roger Nolan

Roger Nolan — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 18:51:55 +0000

Never mind mike, we’re giving away a MacBook air so you can try for that if you like.

By: Matthias

Matthias — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:28:13 +0000

The Swiss start-up Gbanga (www.gbanga.com) is certainly another cool social LBS casual game that is ready to take off.

By: Why Google Goggles should scare offline retailers.

Why Google Goggles should scare offline retailers. — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:15:51 +0000

[...] Vouchers as a business model has become shit hot over the course of 2009 – with business looking to drive thrifty customers through the doors in a recession. Undoubtably it is going to become a whole new race in 2010. Two other startups which are innovating and making headway in this location & social space are Foursquare and Gowalla, both of which Techcrunch reports, are awating to unleash the voucher model through the backdoor. [...]

By: DuBose Cole

DuBose Cole — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 15:07:53 +0000

Really like that you’re approaching the idea of European adoption of geolocation services the way you are. I agree that the US companies are aiming to increase scale, while the Euro companies are aiming to monetize and grow the network locally.

I had compared Foursquare, Dopplr, Gowalla and Rummble on my blog earlier last month and really liked most of them (all were great for different things, but I didn’t fancy Dopplr that much)
Links Here: http://bit.ly/7akc0a & http://bit.ly/4C0PJW

However, I wonder if the overall question is whether information is key to driving repeat use or if the gaming aspect from Foursquare and Gowalla will drive growth?

Hadn’t heard of Flook by the way, will have to check that out….

By: Chipper

Chipper — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:33:41 +0000

–Agree with Mike about the two approaches, but do not think it’s one or the other.
–Believe the winner in this location-based space will be able to synthesize both the location-based search (the useful) and location-based social networking (the social/fun) – into a simple, integrated interface.
–Recommend keeping an eye out for Tellmewhere 2.0 iphone app coming later this month.

By: Keef Moon

Keef Moon — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:12:50 +0000

Roger,

I’ve made a start at using Flook. I’ll have to give it some more time.

Keef Moon (No not that one…the other one…yeah…no it’s alright, I get that all the time.)

By: haber

haber — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:45:09 +0000

Hi,
Thanks Colette, I confirm, it’s the right number
My gut feel is that location and friend finding is a feature not an app, but if you can layer more valuable content into the app then the friend finding is certainly huge added value to the consumer experience.

By: Biones

Biones — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 09:32:01 +0000

Just checked, today Foursquare have 135k users… Ehy boys, is a very small number! There are a lot of services with more users that never appeared on Techcrunch, tell me why…

By: Christophe AMALRIC

Christophe AMALRIC — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:39:35 +0000

Hi,
Thanks Colette, I confirm, it’s the right number

Btw Tellmewhere 2.0 for iPhone is coming in a few days, stay tuned !

Christophe

By: Colette Ballou

Colette Ballou — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 18:18:55 +0000

Dude, what about Tellmewhere — 400,000 users! How many do Foursquare and Gowalla have?

By: Wo ist Walter? - Teil 2 | bindermichi.de

Wo ist Walter? - Teil 2 | bindermichi.de — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:22:30 +0000

[...] Out Foursquare, Facebook is Poised To Dominate Geo Vote: Will Europeans use Gowalla, FourSquare or what? Why I Love Foursquare Location, Location, Location: SimpleGeo, Twitter, [...]

By: Doug C

Doug C — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:51:13 +0000

To be fair to mike the debate will certainly get more interesting as he delves deeper and the 2 apps mentioned are the buzz apps of the moment.

Hopefully the debate will cover all angles including dating and vouchers. We use the Rippll platform to publish many social location based apps and have over 100,000 registered users. Our dating app Purpll and our Local Offers app for vouchers have been far more popular than our Game based app City-King which is like Foursquare meets Monopoly so we re guessing it’s a PR thing for the ex Dodgeball guys..

My gut feel is that location and friend finding is a feature not an app, but if you can layer more valuable content into the app then the friend finding is certainly huge added value to the consumer experience.

By: Andrew J Scott

Andrew J Scott — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:29:10 +0000

@eric You’re completely right, our website is a mess at the moment. We’re on the case. Didn’t you try Rummble for iPhone? that is a much better experience

@murat We have extensive Twitter and Facebook integration, with more coming soon. Be great to hear your thoughts – feel free to tweet us @rummble we’re always greatful for feedback.

@Sheryl Breuker, Rummble works anywhere in the world. In addition you can search for places you’re not in. Let us know what you think!

By: Andrew J Scott

Andrew J Scott — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 18:13:36 +0000

Hi Everyone – I’m always a happy man to see more posts around location related services and mobile. 2010 will be an exciting year! Some responses:

@eric You’re completely right, our website is a mess at the moment; it is very feature rich however. We’re on the case to make it much cleaner, easier to use and relaunch it accordingly. Didn’t you try Rummble for iPhone? that is a much better experience

@murat We have extensive Twitter and Facebook integration, with more coming soon. Be great to hear your thoughts – feel free to tweet us @rummble we’re always greatful for feeadback.

@Sheryl Breuker, Rummble works anywhere in the world. In addition you can search for places you’re not in. Let us know what you think!

By: Jan Schulz-Hofen

Jan Schulz-Hofen — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:29:30 +0000

Very cool post, Mike. And interesting to see how the polls will turn out.

Regarding the back door tactic you mention: I think you’re right and that it’s very clever from Foursquare and Gowalla to use gaming (=competition) as a driver to get people use the service as much as they can.

However, I don’t believe that the most successful business models will be voucher-based. Statistics will be much more interesting in my opinion. Having all the data Gowalla, Foursquare, etc. are piling up, they can easily create something like Google Analytics for restaurants, bistros or bike repair shops. Think about visits, return rate, maybe duration (if checkout was introduced as well), number of people in your group, etc., etc. I think local businesses will love this.

Very fascinating.

Jan

By: Tom Morris

Tom Morris — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:26:15 +0000

I don’t use any of them. I’ve never really thought of location-based services as needing to be tied to a game. All I really want is the ability for me to be able to say to websites “this is where I am” in much the same way OpenID/OAuth lets me say “this is who I am” and “this is what you are allowed to do”, and let me build up a collection of scripts around that. Location doesn’t feel like a feature or a product, it’s just infrastructure.

Unfortunately, it’s infrastructure that nobody has really gotten right: the closest thing I’ve found to location services not sucking is FireEagle, which is hampered by the fact that it’s run by Yahoo! and thus has all the business troubles Yahoo! currently has. The W3C/HTML5 way of doing location is tied too closely to the browser rather than the user – my browser doesn’t know where I am often, but a lot of other technology does. Latitude is too tied into Google services and hasn’t really been made into an open API yet. The mobile providers want to charge oodles for people to use that data, meaning it’s not really something hackers can build on. And Gowalla/FourSquare seem like pointless boondoggles on something that should be as boring and low-level as DNS.

Plus I don’t have an iPhone. I have what they call a “feature phone”, and one of its many features is that it doesn’t support stuff like FourSquare.

By: Gino

Gino — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:17:32 +0000

Hi Mike,

this is a good news… Let’s go deeper, I’m here if you need more info and statistics about Mobnotes growth and usage.

By: Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:04:26 +0000

Hi Gino – Yes, if you actually READ the post I say “I’ll be delving deeper into this battleground and the players, from a European perspective.” Stay in touch

By: Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 10:00:44 +0000

I don’t know about you but I’m still waiting for my Macbook Air. http://www.wubud.com/signup/

Typing on this Amstrad is getting tiring.

By: Gino

Gino — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:53:02 +0000

Mike,

why don’t you stop talking about Foursquare and instead talk about what really happen in the EU ecosystem?

Do you know that currently Foursquare have nearly 130.000 users all around the world?
Well, we at Mobnotes.com have the same numbers, but just in EU…

We of course don’t have a PR office, with no money to spent in that (we’re still a bootstrapped company looking for funding…), but we should be at least considered by you at least for our size and numbers…

Sincerely,

Gino

By: Jane Sales

Jane Sales — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:22:22 +0000

Hi there – definitely something that’s in our plans. We’re already well integrated with Twitter – you can find tweets near you, and tweet your flooks. Facebook needs a little more care – you don’t want to spam your friends – but will be in flook soon. Email me – jane at flook dot it – if you want to give me your input on what you’d like to see in flook.

By: Roger Nolan

Roger Nolan — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 09:15:56 +0000

We’re in Henley and Reading is well flooked