The rise and stall of checking in
Posted by Dave Molloy on September 22, 2011 in Online, Social Media, Web technologies with 0 CommentsArthur's Day is asking users to check in for charity, which will be a first for many. What is happening to location services?
Today, Guinness will be donating €5 to charity for everyone who uses Facebook’s check in feature to tell their friends they’re celebrating Arthur’s Day in the pub.
The campaign is for the benefit of the Arthur Guinness Fund, which funds community projects and social entrepreneurs. It’s for a good cause and is set to add to the profile of the Arthur’s Day event. It’s also probably going to represent the highest use of “check in” features in Ireland.
Because no-one uses it.
Anyone here?
The definition of geolocation is finding where a user is by using a smartphone’s GPS feature. It’s been a big idea in digital marketing for a while now: it can be used for finding friends, sharing when you’re at an interesting place, or, in theory, trading special offers for people who check in (and show your company in their news feed).
A recent report shows only 12% of American adults who own a smartphone use a check-in location service like Foursquare or Gowalla.
It’s not as if the technology has no potential – the same report shows that 55% of the same group use geolocation on their smartphones to get directions or recommendations for nearby businesses.
If usage figures for the United States are low – where these companies have their highest penetration – we can safely assume they’re no better here in Ireland, and might be far worse.
Irish user numbers
Put simply, knowing where your friends are is only helpful if all your friends actually update their information. And at the moment, there’s no incentive to do so.
The Google ad Planner tells us that Foursquare, one of the biggest dedicated check-in services on the planet, only gets about 11k Irish visitors to its website every month. That’s pretty poor. Another major player, Gowalla, doesn’t even have “available data”.
Obviously, Google’s data doesn’t tell the full story. Most users would access the service from a mobile device on a daily basis. But 11k visitors to your main site isn’t a good indicator.
Back to the drawing board
Now, geolocation is changing. Companies are moving away from dedicated, stand-alone check-in services to using it as added value for another product.
Facebook’s recent changes included the ability to add your location to every single post - bringing location as an additional feature of updates. That’s because they’re killing off Facebook Places.
Gowalla recently announced a total redesign moving away from being a dedicated location service to what they call a “storytelling” platform.
And then there’s Yelp.
Yelp is an enormous player in the user reviews market, and in the USA, checking in allows users to share tips and sometimes earn rewards or discounts. In Ireland, it’s still in its infancy, but is receiving 160k users a month who are reading user-generated reviews - that’s over 14 times the traffic Foursquare receives.
That’s the key to breaking geolocation, particularly in a market with a small population: using it as an add-on rather than a standalone feature. And the major players have finally found their way to that conclusion.
Trackback URL
Enjoy this post? Share it with others.
Comments
About H+A Blog
Our blog was created to educate, inspire, provoke thoughts and generate ideas.
It is a voice of our passionate team who shares its knowledge and views on marketing, PR, branding and new media, while also discussing the latest trends, innovation and technology in the communications industry.
Categories
Recent Entries
- Employees, Social Media and Trust - Oct 27th
- Best of blogs: what we read last week - Oct 17th
- The rise and stall of checking in
- Facebook vs. Google +.....the social media war - 2nd August 2011
- Tips on how to survive the Dragons Den - 14th July 2011