Julia Slaughter

Posts Tagged ‘Location Wars’

I don’t know how many players there are in this game exactly, it seems like too many to count. However,  I picked the two that researched seemed to indicate were the big dogs in the game  – FourSquare and GoWalla and two that I’ve seen all over Facebook – Loopt and Whrrl. I spent quite a fews weeks playing with all of them, and here’s what I learned.

The first player I knocked out of the game and off my iPhone was Loopt. The interface was clean and straight forward, though it wasn’t the best looking interface of the apps I looked at. The strength of Loopt for me is that you can setup events which I liked alot, but I ultimately ruled it out because it somehow seemed that when I went to check in – the database was always off.

The other three apps would all have me close to where I was, while Loopt had me miles from where I wanted to be. This was particularly frustrating when I went to add new locations, I would get this tiny little map and I thought I would be in close proximity to where I actually was only to find out when I looked at the website it was almost impossible to get the address sorted out without getting a site administrator involved. A few days of that and I was totally frustrated, so I hung it up.

FourSquare and GoWalla are considered to be the two heavy weights in the game but FourSquare was the next app that I ruled. Again the interface was pretty clean and straightforward, a little nicer than Loopt but I wouldn’t say that their interface was the slickest.  FourSquare is the app that has the “Mayor” feature that allows the person who checks in the most to be the Mayor of a location, however you can pretty much check in anywhere without having to be there, which I didn’t like. (Especially since some places like Starbucks are offering incentives for location Mayors, it seems like it will lead to some false check-ins.)

Next up for me was GoWalla, I still have it on my iPhone and still use it on occasion.  Of all of the apps, GoWalla has the nicest interface, the visuals are bold and bright – it makes you want to use it. (They have a game where you collect and leave items, which I’m kind of *meh* about.) I love the passport which shows your checks in, gives you graphical representations of states etc.  GoWalla doesn’t allow check ins until you reach a certain proximity which I like. It lets you set up Trips, where you have spots tied together by a theme or a location and once you’ve visited all the spots you get the icon for that trip added to your passport. I don’t use GoWalla more because their privacy controls seem to be all or nothing.

For me the big win was Whrrl, while it can’t hold a candle to GoWalla in the graphics department I love the privacy features. I can create locations that no one else can see but me, and every time I check in I can pick who can see it and where I want it to publish.  I’ve emailed the Whrrl team several times to get items moved into different societies, or even made recommendations, and the staff always seems interested in user feedback.

As I adopted Whrrl some of my friends have started catching on, and we’ve had those moments where we check in and at least comment on each others’ locations even if it hasn’t quite gotten us moving in the same direction yet.  I’m still hopeful that we’ll be able to use the location based social networking to facilitate a little more socializing!

The sites for these apps are:

www.Loopt.com – Since I started this, Loopt seems to have gotten an upgrade.

www.FourSquare.com

www.GoWalla.com

www.Whrrl.com

last month I started this project – I was investigating location based social networking. I noticed that posts from Whrrl and FourSquare were sneaking into my Facebook feed. Then I noticed that Twitter was giving me the option to enable locations in my tweets. What is all of this? Do I even care? Well, then they started talking about them on AppSlappy and so I decided to cannon ball into Location Based Social Networking – I downloaded the four major players in the location based app game right now.

So let’s get this show on the road…

The first question you are probably asking yourself (because it’s what I asked myself) is why do I even care about this? Most of the location based networks (and subsequent apps) have tackled this from the standpoint that they are making real life some sort of game and frankly I don’t care about the game aspect of this stuff at all. I’m not interested in collecting GoWalla’s virtual items. The benefit that I envisioned is meeting my friend Nancy at Happy Hour and “checking in,” and some friends in the area noticing and joining us. (Maybe they saw it on Facebook or maybe they are notified through the App and they think – “hey that sounds like a good idea, let’s go!”) Or finding some place worth checking out that’s off the beaten path when I’m out of town.

I have to admit, so far it hasn’t quite worked the way I planned – I blame the fact that I live in the South, all this polite Southern upbringing. Nancy and I went to Happy Hour and instead of joining us there when my friends saw my check in, my friends “commented” on the check in that they wished I had invited them. I told them they were invited by the virtue that it was published online, so maybe I will get them trained. It takes time for people to adapt to new technology and I know that for the most part, I am an early adapter.

The benefit to me of being an early adapter is that I feel like I’m helping to build my local network. I make it a point to take pictures and make recommendations so that people that come and visit this area can venture away from the beaten path with a little less fear because they aren’t jumping totally off into the unknown. They can see my comments and I often provide pictures. Though I admit that I feel a little lonely when I check in and over and over again I see that I am the first person to check in there!

If you own a business, you absolutely should care about these things, and now is the time to get involved so that you can be a trendsetter, not chasing after it later. (It’s also a good idea to keep track of what your customers are saying about you.) I visited a friends salon and while I was there I checked in with all four services to help “put him on the map.” Businesses, particularly service oriented businesses, that aren’t paying attention the feedback they are getting on the web are taking a huge gamble! Even though Location Based Social Networks are just getting off the ground, ignoring them hoping that they’ll go away is just a bad idea.

There are privacy concerns with location based products, but like ANY information you put on the Internet – you have to be smart about it! With the App that I settled on, my home address is completely 100% private. My first and last name are not on my account. Yes, I did link it to my Facebook BUT I only add real life friends to Facebook. (Seriously I have “denied” requests from acquaintances and ex-boyfriends because I don’t think they need to have that kind of access to my life.)

Okay so we’ve covered the why, now we need to get the bottom of which one?