In the previous post, I speculated that, despite the current infatuation with Pull-style location based apps, ultimately Push-based apps will have more appeal to enterprises wanting to connect with their customer base.  My premise is that they won’t have a choice.  While they may experiment with games, check-ins or what ever comes next, ultimately they will want to leverage their rich CRM data and they will want to own the customer connection. Working through a third party app won’t give them that.  Developing their own app won’t get mind share.  So they will look at ways to talk directly to the customer at the time and place of their choosing.  And that will be through push.

I’d further speculate that we will see three phases: Continue reading Beyond Location Whack-a-Mole (Part III): The Enterprise Strikes Back →

The Push for Pull

Most of the discussion in location to date has been about some variant of pull-based engagement: the user takes a phone out and does something, be that a check-in, a location-tagged tweet, a game, or a search for something nearby.  As discussed in the previous post, these variants are popping up and down, falling in and out of favor and spawning on-going discussions over who will win. All assume an active user and a reactive cloud: the cloud responds to the user action in some rewarding manner. Continue reading Beyond Location Whack-a-Mole (Part II): Push vs. Pull →

It’s Noisy Out There

This week’s SXSW event did nothing to lessen the din around social location services. The first six months of 2010 was “The Year of the Check-In”. The last half was the “Year of Why it isn’t Check-Ins”. The last six months was also the “Year of the Geo-Fence” and the “Year of the Local Deal”. And this week we hear it’s the “Year of Local Group Chat”. New location models are coming and going like the plastic rodents in a Whack-a-Mole game.   We can’t even dedicate a full twelve months to our “Year of the _____” meme.  If it’s confusing for the Geo-Crowd, it must be incomprehensible for the advertisers who don’t have time to take aim at one trend before it disappears and another pops up. And that is NOT GOOD since it results in desultory experiments with location rather than concerted efforts. Continue reading Beyond Location Whack-a-Mole (Part 1) →

Marissa Mayer, head of Google Local gave a generally neglected overview of Google Maps at SXSW.  She reported some new stats (150M users of mobile app, 2B driving miles on Google Navigation), but this was mostly lost in the chatter about new group chat apps or where to get good breakfast tacos.

Google maps has been raising the bar so often that their latest innovations rarely make big news. Continue reading Google Maps raises the bar…again →

GPS Business News did an extended interview with me and broadcast it as a podcast.  It’s kind of long but hopefully interesting for those interesting in maps and geo.  We talk about trends in location, location platforms, maps and M&A in the location market, roughly in that order.