Getting Mainstream Users To Check In. With Facebook joining the bandwagon of location-based services, it may seem that these networks are taking off and heavily used by people. But the reality is quite different, as the New York Times finds out. According to Forrester Research, only 4 percent of Americans have ever tried any of the location-based services and only 1 percent use them on a weekly basis. To entice more people into using their services, companies have initiated several added benefits such as reward coupons for users who “check-in” using their apps.
The Times reports: Sharing location becomes a simple cost-benefit analysis for most people, said Matt Galligan, chief executive of SimpleGeo, which sells location technology to companies building apps. “There has to be an incentive for giving away very specific information, like coupons or points.”Shopkick, which became available this month, offers coupons to people when they walk into stores like Best Buy and Macy’s.
Treasure Hunt Riots | Paul Slade - Journalist. Why you should check out the check in. Why Recommended Places Are the Next Big Thing in Location: Tech News and Analysis « Now that Facebook is doing its best to make location-based services and the idea of a “check-in” mainstream with Facebook Places, the real game in location is shifting elsewhere: such as trying to make sense of all of the location data that users are providing through various services. One obvious goal is to offer users recommendations for places based on their behavior or the activity of their social network, and several startups have their eye on that prize: The Hotlist, a seed-funded startup based in New York, just announced it has integrated the Facebook Places API into its recommendation service, and Hunch.com — another NYC-based startup, founded by Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake — has just launched a recommended-location service.
The Hotlist started as a service aimed at university students, designed by its founders to aggregate information from a user’s social network and show popular nightspots. Facebook has its eye on the recommendation prize as well, obviously. DigitalTrends : Marché mondial des services basés sur la géolocalisation (2009-2014)