By Paul Furiga
If you believe the venture capitalists or the tech gurus, the hottest social media tools are the many geolocation services that seem to sprout up daily.
These services, with various tweaks, allow users to post to a social media platform, letting friends, businesses, etc. know where they are located, for impromptu meet-ups, to learn about nearby food or retail specials, unlock vanity badges or just to sound cool.
The king (and queen and several other ranks of royalty) in geolocation is Foursquare, and more about this platform in a few paragraphs.
First, let’s assess the pretenders to the throne.
Twitter, though not originally designed to connect people and businesses via the GPS signal of computers or smartphones, has emerged as one of the top social media tools for figuring out, as truckers used to say back in the dinosaur days of CB radio, “Where you at an’ whatcha haulin’?”
Since early 2010, Twitter has included a feature that allows inclusion of geographic location when tweeting. Many businesses, particularly retail stores and restaurants, have created Twitter geolocation campaigns involving free offers or contests, and now, even advertising.
Facebook also has a geolocation feature that allows users to share location when posting updates. Like Twitter’s geolocation feature, it seems to work well based upon feedback from clients and friends, however, as with Twitter, Facebook geolocation seems to be more of a “me-too” added feature to keep users inside Facebook so they don’t wander to other places on the Internet.
The downside is that this “afterthought” use of these platforms means most users don’t think of them as geolocation platforms and don’t use them that way.
Among the services focused solely on the power of geolocation to create new value in social media, Gowalla is second to Foursquare in terms of its purity of application for social and business purposes. However, its user base (about 600,000) is just one tenth of Foursquare. And that, despite its award-winning design and interface, is its biggest shortcoming.
Finally, Foursquare. The genius of the platform is not its technology (which is great) but its clever use of social engineering. Co-founder Dennis Crowley is already being proclaimed by at least one business guru as the logical replacement for Steve Jobs at Apple.
Crowley and his team are clearly on to something behind selling ads using GPS. This video of his talk at TEDxEast is a great intro to their mojo concept, “manufacturing serendipity.”
While it’s currently king of the geolocation hill, Foursquare is hardly the end of the road for geolocation. Promising new services such as Bizzy are launching with new social integrations that could create great new opportunities for businesses willing to explore geolocation.
Today, though, if you or your business want to explore the whole geolocation phenomenon, it’s time to get on Foursquare. Check in. Collect some badges. Maybe (just maybe) let us know “Where you at an’ whatcha haulin.”
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Paul Furiga is president and CEO of WordWrite Communications.
