Are check-in apps just a fad or are they the future of local business marketing? It may still be too early to tell, but I’m starting to lean toward the latter, because this space is only picking up more and more steam, and businesses and marketers are getting excited about it as more apps continue to flood the mobile app markets. Are check-in apps just a fad? Tell us what you think. At PubCon this week, WebProNews spoke with Gib Olander, director of biz dev at Localeze, which provides local business listings to all kinds of sites and apps. He certainly seems convinced that location-based services (LBS) are here to stay. Putting the “Where” and the “When” in Marketing “Nicely, social layers added on top of that where you start to get your Facebook and your friends’ recommendations,” he continues. “Yelp did a great job with reviews, and then Foursquare came along, and they’ve added a really neat new component with this check-in feature, and there’s other sites that are doing it as well, like Brightkite and SCVNGR, but one of the things I think is really neat and new for marketers is they’ve added the time of ‘when.’” Which Check-In Apps Should I Utilize? One challenge that marketers face along with these types of opportunities is knowing which services to utilize. There are seemingly new check-in apps coming out just about every day. Foursquare is the one that’s gotten the most attention thus far, but there are plenty of others breathing down that company’s neck to be the “it” check-in app – the Facebook to Foursquare’s MySpace. Of course, Facebook itself is doing more in this space with its Facebook Places product. It will be interesting to see how other apps co-exist with that. Facebook Places is only going to get bigger and bigger. The social network has over half a billion user, let’s not forget. “I think the real competition from the Facebook ecosystem is gonna come from third-party developers like Zynga that build on top of the Facebook Places API, because you’ll notice with Facebook Places that they haven’t done anything with like virtual goods like badges or points, and these are some of the main attractions of Foursquare and Gowalla,” Lawrence Coburn, who runs the geo-location app provider DoubleDutch recently told WebProNews. “So they’ve just left that open, but I know that third-party developers won’t be so shy, and they’ll come in and make games, because there’s a lot of good game developers on Facebook.” To have complete read of this, you can visit related links.
Check-In Apps Add Key Relevancy Factor to Your Marketing
Posted on: November 14th, 2010 by Rhed
