Tommy Collison

Niall Harbison and Pat Phelan, two bloggers who I have huge respect for, recently blogged their opinions on location-based software. They focused on FourSquare, the popular location game which involves ‘checking-in’ to restuarants, LUAS stops and shops to gain points, ‘badges’ and special offers, should the venue provide them.

They focused on FourSquare because there’s nothing else on the market that does the same thing (I know about Facebook Places, but I’ll get to that in a second). It’s currently got the market share: they’ve got 2.2 million users worldwide. Of which, 250,000 of those are in Europe. I tried to get Ireland statistics but was told by their press office that they’re unable to give country-specific numbers.

The fact that they own the lion’s share of the location market counts for a lot; or does it? The truth is that location is about as far from public consciousness as it’s possible to be. I reckon that 95% of people who read “Surfing back to school” last Sunday hadn’t heard of FourSquare. To me, FourSquare are leaders in a field that nobody knows about yet, let alone cares about enough to use.

Why? That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, there isn’t enough interest; like I said. People don’t get enough out of these location apps to use them in their daily lives like they use, say, Facebook (700 billion minutes collectively spent on it each month, anyone? (source).

So what do we have to do to make people use location stuff? Well, that’s the billion-dollar question.

Any developer can cook up an app that allows you to ‘check in’ to venues and so on, but it’ll take someone and something very clever to then make that app mainstream.

What do they have to do?

1. Make using this app worth my while.

All these location apps boast that I can see where my friends are so I can meet up with them. The problem is that not enough of my friends use the service for this point to apply to me – I’ve watched my friends from school get Facebook and then tentatively set up a Twitter account; it’s going to be a while before they get into Location. It’s also a chicken-and-egg problem to an extent: people don’t use the app enough to warrent me to set up an account. The cycle continues.

How do we break that? I’m working on it the only way I can imagine: by using it despite not really getting anything out of it.

2. Make a damned good app

The current FourSquare app is fine. We passed using ‘fine’ apps way back – the app store deserves great apps. I’m not talking exclusively about asthetics (unfortunately) either. Whatever about pretty apps, iPhone/iPad users deserve apps that don’t crash regularly.

3. Most importantly, appeal to the technophobes

I’m not getting down the ‘iPad: the computer for our grandmothers’ route, but the iPhone (and its big brother) wasn’t a success because all the geeks (like me *cough*) bought it – it’s because the technophobes bought it. Early adopters only account for a small part of the market – 13.5%, while the late adopters weigh in at 16%. (source)

When I’m writing for the Sunday Business Post on something technical, I’m given the advice to ‘pretend you’re writing for somebody’s mother’. This advice rings true for these sorts of apps. They get blinded by their ‘target audience’ and forget that there’s a whole other generation that could be using their app.

My mum, an avid blogger and twitter-er, tried out FourSquare and stopped. Why? Because she ‘couldn’t see the point of it all’.

I’ll tell you what the point should be. I haven’t been to Belfast in a couple of years. I’ve been up there once or twice visiting a surgeon. If I went up there now, I’d probably go without my folks, because I’m taking responsibility for all things medical now. When I was finished in the hospital, I’d want something to eat. I’d like to be able to fire up an app, and enter the search phrase ‘pizza’, because I’m always in a pizza mood after medical stuff. I’d like the app to return some results on a map, based on which was closer to me. I’d like a little bubble to appear: “Phil recommends the Hawaiian pizza in ABC Restaurant, which is 0.8 miles away, but XYZ restaurant (1.2 miles away) is doing a lunchtime special on pepperoni pizzas”

If something like that existed, with enough user tips and enough venues providing info on specials (not just ‘free drink for the mayor’, just letting the app know about deals they’re doing), the creator would make a killing.

So, if a location-based app or software comes along and ticks all these boxes, be it Twitter, Facebook*, FourSquare (if they pull their act together) or a completely new player to the field, they stand to benefit massively from it.

* The only thing about Facebook is their privacy settings. I think that they’re hobbling themselves with their complete lack of concern for people’s privacy. Facebook “Places”, a direct competitor to FourSquare, launched Stateside last week, but users were automatically opted into sharing their location and had to manually, which caused some ruffled feathers among users.