Enabling New Experiences Through Check-ins

Dennis Crowley, Founder of Foursquare, and me.

Dennis Crowley – Foursquare & Pete Cashmore – Mashable

One of the big keynote presentations was with Dennis Crowley, the founder of Foursquare (he’s the one waving in the picture with me to the right).  He talked a lot about what it’s been like at Foursquare during their growth over the last year or two.  However, he also gave some interesting information about what they’ve learned and where they’re headed.

They currently have over 7.5 million users, and over 250,000 merchants who use their system.  These users provide them with a ton of data, since the average user has 3 checkins per day and gives back in the form of recommendations.

They have a ton of ideas about where they want to go, but there are only 50 people who currently work there, so they have to carefully prioritize what’s next for them.  They’re focused on providing badges to encourage positive behaviors, such as the gym-rat badge for checking into a gym 10 times a month, or the “I voted” badge during the elections.  Also, just before SXSW, they launched the “Explore” tab, which utilizes their rich data about you and your friends and provides “an amazon-like recommendation engine” about where you might want to shop, eat, etc.

Crowley feels that their future lies in their ability to “blow out the possibilities of the database of information” they have.  This means both providing information to users about what can help them, but also what it means for businesses who utilize Foursquare.  For example, imagine knowing the potential income for your business when someone walks in your location.  In addition, Foursquare has already proven to provide a lot of potential for small businesses who don’t have an organized loyalty program.  Foursquare has the potential to further become a more universal and amplified loyalty program that provides rich data for venue owners.  We’re seeing just the tip of this with the Foursquare/American Express partnership that’s part of SXSW.  By combining Foursquare checkin data with AMEX financial data, they’ll be able to show the exact amount you spent, where, when, how often, and more.

Along with the potential that lies in what’s already been mentioned, Foursquare has their eye on the future.  They’re looking at things like auto check-ins on new phones with technologies like near field communications (NFC) chips.  “How much easier is it to check in when all you have to do is tap or swipe.”  Not only are they focused on new devices and adapting to new technologies, they’re currently working with over 200 brands, and have their sights set on working with many more.  Much like Twitter, they “love it when people build stuff on top of” their service, and know that others’ innovations could fuel their success.

While most of the conversation felt like Cashmore was having a personal conversation with Crowley, which was off topic, and Crowley avoiding most probing questions, there were some hints at Foursquare’s future.  It was more obvious than ever that Foursquare’s future success lies in its database and the potential to grow it.  The ability for venue owners (businesses) to take advantage of deep, detailed knowledge on people who walk into their locations will help them better market to customers, and at the same time, enhance the customer relationship.

Geolocation on the “Horizon”

Presenter: Jason Finkelstein, Director of Product Management & Marketing, WaveMarket, Inc.

Geolocation is here, but it’s still got a long way to come (pun intended).  Geolocation started with in-car navigation systems and then moved to personal navigation devices.  Now we’re onto personal location devices that can track you or devices.  The focus of this presentation was on mobile phones.

55% of all SMS messages are “where r u?” – That’s about 650 billion location based text messages in 2009.

We are just starting to see the future of location based services:

Location is a feature of many kinds of products and services, not an industry unto itself or a vertical market.

Types of Geolocation Data:

• Latitude/longitude
• Latency – how long does it take to find your signal/location
• Confidence – radius – still not a lot of confidence in cellular tower location
• Reverse Geocoded (real world address) and Points of Interest – pre-populated locations
• Location Tagged Info (Tweets, Flickr photos, etc.)
• Map Data Layers/GIS (This is a whole industry) – City names, street names, street geometry (one way street, speed limits), Satellite/birdseye/terrain

The industry is working on a “Z” (XYZ axis) to be able to track altitude.

Variables influencing ability to get location information from mobile devices:

Carrier Network – different carriers have different kinds of location built-into their networks, this location is accessed in different ways on each carrier network and can vary in accuracy and latency.

Device Type – 200 million mobile subscribers, Most (81.5%) have limited devices which generally don’t have GPS, but can be found. Some (18.5%) have smartphones with GPS built in.

While the use of GPS chips is increasing, if you are planning to develop location based apps today, you must still cater to the 4/5 of people who do not have this functionality.  The value chain for this development is structured like this:

1. Infrustructure players – Do the calculation of where that phone is – Qualcomm, Nokia Siemens Networks, Sony Ericson, Redknee

2. Wireless carriers – AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon – provide the phones and services

3. Location Aggregator – Veriplace – pulls together location data for API tie in by developers

4. LBS Developer/Content – develop the apps and plug-ins

5. End User – uses the device, apps, etc.

However, when GPS is built into the phone, this chain is not completely required.  Apps can then be built to interact with the internal GPS API to utilize location data.

Here are the ways location can be accessed today along with advantages and disadvantages of each:

Standalone GPS – It’s free, uses GPS satellites, so need line of site location.  It’s high accuracy, but it takes a long time to get location (minutes), and some carriers lock the GPS chip.  Download and install an app is still a challange for most people and app developers must develop for different devices.  Also, the app must be running to access location.  It does provide latitude and longitute, which the others don’t.

Cell ID – It depends upon a location database of cell towers.  The phone connects to cell tower and this “location” uses knowledge of where the cell tower is located.  The accuracy of this is lower, but it’s used for both smartphones and feature phones, because it can be located indoors, and has quick location fix (<3 seconds).

WiFi – This also depends on a location database.  It’s similar to Cell ID, but uses MAC addresses on WiFi hotspots – which have limited coverage today.  It can be unreliable due to wifi spots that move. However, if the device has open access to wifi the cost is zero.

Carriers are supporting more location based technolgies on both smarphones and feature phones and sometimes use a combination of the methods above for identifying location:

Assisted GPS – A hybrid of GPS and Cell ID

Triangulation – AFLT – The next level of Cell IDs, it uses multiple Cell ID’s to center a location.  It’s easily accessible via carrier networks and quick  (<10 seconds)

Location is still a challenge for many developers because of this confusing web of networks and the many ways devices can use to find location.  App developers in this area are still sorting through the challenges of location information and authentication and a whole new layer of legal and privacy challenges have arisen.  A recent study showed that people are more concerned about privacy surrounding their location than their credit card data.

Therefore, developer have proceeded forward with a few approaches, such as choosing to focus only on downloadable apps for limited smartphones (iPhone/Android).  Some have made deals with carriers, but there’s a high barrier to entry, so some are working through aggregators like Veriplace to add location to certain app types like sms/voice/web.

SXSW Scene: Who’s the dude playing four square?

Koz and I were leaving the Austin Convention Center tonight and saw these guys playing four square right outside the doors. We stopped to watch and take a few pictures.

While other up-and-coming brands are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their buzz on at South by Southwest Interactive, this simple game (which cost about $5.99 in sidewalk chalk) had people lined up to play.

Location Based Wars Heating Up

Unfortunately, I’m still sitting here in Bloomington waiting for my flight.  It’s now been delayed 2 hours and 15 minutes.  It’s given me time to double check things (although I’ll still probably forget something) and update my iPhone.

I’ve already mentioned that the location based wars were heating up before SXSW, but I was shocked when I went to update my iPhone today and had app updates from Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and Whrrl.  And these are just the location based apps I have on my phone (along with Brightkite).

It should certainly be interesting to watch as things progress this weekend as each are running plenty of promotions.  Gowalla is even throwing a party, and the only way to get in is to “find” a virtual VIP wristband by checking in around Austin.  They’re also having a contest giving away some real items if you find them virtually.

Location Based Networking at SXSW

Since Twitter hit it big on Oprah about this time last year, everyone’s been wondering, “What’s the next big thing.”  The technology that has been emerging as the next big thing appears to be location based social networking tools.  Over the last year, services like Gowalla, Whrrl, and Foursquare have been catching on with the techset and are starting to reach the mainstream.  It has forced other services like Yelp to incorporate location based checkins to their services. 

Just in time for SXSW, one of the players in this area – Brightkite – is planning to launch a universal check-in feature to their service – tieing into the APIs of these other services.  Essentially, this would allow users to check in via Brightkite and it would automatically update their location on Foursquare and others (although Gowalla’s API is currently read-only).

It will be interesting to watch the location based social networking services battle at SXSW this year.  Me, I’ll keep updating the services I have on my phone – Yelp, Gowalla, and Foursquare (just removed Whrrl) – while I’m there.