Mobile Inc » Location Based Services (LBS)

Mobile Location Really Is About To Get Interesting

Murat — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:05:11 +0000

After joining in the debate at MobHappy on the post ‘Location on Mobile: Still Wandering Around A Little Aimlessly‘, I decided to post on here why I think location is about to become popular with consumers.

The conversation started because of a blog post on Mobile Entertainment describing The Top 10 Mobile Entertainment Misconceptions with number 9 being:

9. “Location-based technology is intrinsically exciting for consumers…”

No it’s not. The phrase “location-based technology” intrinsically puts most people who aren’t in the mobile industry to sleep. And they look equally unimpressed if you promise them their phone can guide them to the nearest cashpoint.

That was the big selling point of the early days of LBS, until the industry realised that even half-cut consumers can womble their way to the nearest bank machine under their own steam. Now the buzz is around social location, and mashing up your handset’s GPS with social media and Web 2.0 services.

The problem is that this is all still technology-led. The assumption that everyone wants to track their friends – and especially that they regularly go out in town with no specific plans in mind of who to meet or where to go – is unproven at best. As is the idea that people want to geotag all their photos and videos and share them with the world, all the time.

The next year or two will see some really smart, desirable mobile services launch that use location. But it’s the ones that are actually based on stuff people want to do that will succeed.

It’s more about great, desirable services that happen to have location elements in the mix.

I disagree with this statement on many counts.

Of course the term “location-based technology” isn’t interesting to the consumer, just like “Capacitive Surfaces” (iPhone touchscreen), “API’s” (applications, websites, plus loads of other cool stuff) aren’t, however these are the things behind the most popular consumer products and services today. You just need to wrap up the technology in a way the consumer can understand and get excited about.

“The problem is that this is all still technology-led” – I really don’t understand how it is technology-led, it’s totally service-led. Location needs to be a service to exist for consumers, for example a GPS chip is just a GPS chip without a TOM TOM attached it. Without all the other stuff knowing your own location is pretty useless, unless your a mountain trekker.

Lets face it, go up to a consumer and say “Location on your mobile will help you a ATM!!” and they probably won’t give a damn. I mean realistically how many times are you going to search for a ATM every week or even use your maps application in general for that matter. Maybe two or three times a week? Now lets try and put it into a better context for you as a consumer, compare your Maps usage to the amount of time you spend on lets say…Facebook. If it’s anything like me and my friends, the difference is huge.

From experience in conducting user research, you don’t just throw in buzz words and hope to get a reaction, you find out where most of their time is spent, tech usage habits and so on, then work in scenarios based on that. I can tell you now that in these tests everyone interviewed aged from 18 to 55 spends an awful lot of time on Facebook.

Once Facebook and Twitter start integrating location (soon), you’ll suddenly have over 300 million consumers location-enabled. No sign ups, no apps, no downloads and no barriers. They just continue updating like they always have. That’s how I see location being a hit, not by walking past a Starbucks and getting a voucher, that stuff won’t ever work until there are standards put in place and adopted by all handset manufacturers (things like vouchers wallets etc). Facebook will be one of the catalysts for adoption, social location is a powerful thing

In the past social location hasn’t really taken off because of the difficulty getting more than a handful of friends signed up to a service. Google Latitude is one example, great application but only 7 of my friends have it, incompatible handsets, lack of Gmail account, blah blah. Compare that to Facebook where all of my mates have an account.

It goes without saying that not everyone wants to track their friends, just like not everyone wants to share photos or tweet, but people do. Give everyday users the ability to do so without a fuss then you’ll see the popularity. There is clearly a demand otherwise money and time wouldn’t be spent developing this sort of thing. Anyway, privacy settings are there for a reason.

I blogged about location based status updates back in May, mainly because I can see the value in them as a Facebook user as well as a consumer. Below is a mock up of how I saw it integrated.

You can already see the popularity in seeing your friends location in services such as FourSquare. I think that we are close to seeing location on mobile being big. Watch this space.

Terminate A Mate: Mobile Location And Video Mashup

Murat — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 13:34:09 +0000

Yesterday, I was thinking about some of the best mobile campaigns of last year and I remembered one in particular that definitely opened my mind up to the possibilities of using LBS for brand engagement rather than driving consumers in-store or redeeming coupons.

Many of you will probably have heard of Terminate A Mate, it picked up bronze for ‘Best LBS Technology‘ at the MAMA awards plus nominations for a whole host of others, although I honestly think it should have won loads more than it actually did.

The Terminate A Mate viral was launched as part of a campaign for the hit US TV-series appearing in the UK called ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’.

The idea is that you select a mate for ‘termination’ by inputting their mobile number the website. A video is then sent to your friend containing their actual location with a message from a worried looking SAS/Armed police type guy saying that the terminators are after him/her knowing their location and to be afraid, very afraid.

There is a lot of complicated tech being used in this campaign, WAP, LBS and video but it puts it all together in a way that integrates perfectly with the Terminator story. I love the way the map is placed into the video to show you where your friend is, that’s genius. It should set an example of how creative you can be with mobile to deliver your message.

The people behind this goodness are 20:20 London and Incentivated.

The site is still live and I really recommend trying it out while you can.

Mastercard: ‘Priceless Picks’ iPhone Application Shows Creative Thought

Murat — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:56:56 +0000

Mastercard have released an iPhone app called ‘Priceless Picks‘ in conjunction with their agencies McCann Erickson and MRM which integrates with the ‘Priceless’ TV ads.

It’s actually quite a nice dynamic, social app which uses your location to show the nearest ‘priceless’ deals that other consumers have pointed out.

Deals are indicated by bubbles on a map, you simply tap on it to get more information. If you happen to find a priceless deal or place you want to share you can tag it to your current location and add further details.

I like how much effort has gone into this app to tie it in with the ‘Priceless’ proposition. The user generated aspect is cool too, although I wonder if the app will have enough ‘picks’ to still be useful if the amount of users is low.

It would be great if users got a discount at these places for using Mastercard or something so there is a reason to keep using the app.

The app is free to download.

It's Finally Happening – Location Based Status Updates On Facebook (Via Nokia App For Now)

Murat — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 16:49:08 +0000

Back in May, I wrote a post about location based status updates on Facebook and how it was something we would be seeing soon. Location data on Facebook will add another dimension to the site, especially as nearly 20% of users are using Facebook mobile.

Today Techcrunch reported that Nokia are releasing a new service which will allow users to update your status with your location. The application is called Ovi Lifecasting and will tie in with Nokia’s Ovi Maps (part of the Nokia Ovi suite).

It works by detecting your location via GPS, allowing you to share it on your Facebook status with a link to a Ovi map. The example below puts in the address, postcode and shortened URL map link in the status update.

This currently only works on the N97 and is in beta stage. It really needs to work across all Nokia s40 and s60 handsets or pre-installed into new handsets to be successful. Otherwise this could just end up on the Nokia beta scrapheap.

Another problem is that Facebook is going to eventually do this themselves and will focus heavily on having the right user experience. There is no point of it working on just high end phones, it needs to work on EVERY phone to be useful, even ones without GPS. This really needs co-operation from mobile networks as they hold the key to user location data but many won’t allow third parties to get at it. Maybe that’s why Facebook is taking its time with this?

Is it just me or do you think having the location pasted in the status like in the image above would just take up too much space if you had more info to input?

For example if you said you were ‘Out with the boys on our way to a nightclub after we have a meal and a few drinks’ PLUS the location – how many lines would that take up if you checking the Facebook mobile site? You would only ever be able to see 2 status updates max. I think it needs to be in the same size font as the time stamp like below.

Again this is something only Facebook themselves could do.

Flickr Launches Location Based Search With "Photos Taken Nearby"

Murat — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 11:56:17 +0000

Flickr have integrated location based photo search into their mobile site (m.flickr.com) available to iPhone 3.0 and Android users. The new feature appears as a link called “Photos taken nearby”, when clicked Flickr asks permission to use your location, then a gallery of recent photos taken around your location is shown. Great for exploring your [...] Related posts:

Concept: Location Based (LBS) / Geo Status Updates On Facebook & Twitter

Murat — Sat, 16 May 2009 15:35:27 +0000

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, it’s only a matter of time before we see Facebook utilising user location via its mobile site. I think it fits in perfectly for status updates done on the move on WAP or SMS, even for mobile uploads.

Friends could glance at their newsfeed on the go and see where friends are, potentially this will be far more useful than Google Latitude as not all my friends have a Gmail account or compatible Latitude phone whereas all of them have a Facebook account.

Obviously there would be user control such as a tick box to toggle displaying your location or choosing to only display it to certain groups you have defined (work, family etc).

The problem they would have is that user location is only available to the operator when accessing websites on your mobile. They would have to do a deal with every mobile network which doesn’t sound too far fetched considering Facebook is Vodafones most browsed mobile site and deals have been done with O2 and Vodafone previously, Twitter too.

In Q4 2008 Facebook mobile hit over 15 million users and is growing at a crazy rate (up from 5 million at the beginning of 2008). Nearly 20% of its user base are now on mobile.

I think this would be a cool feature to Facebook/Twitter and would enhance the experience. What do you think?