GPS World, January 2011

THE BUSINESS WIRELESS PULSE NEWSLETTER Location Check Ins Find Revenue What makes money in LBS Mobile games are using location to garner the big bucks that have so far eluded most of the rest of the category My Town from mobile game maker Booyah blends LBS with social gaming Brian Cho of Booyah asserts Weve differentiated ourselves in gaming by incorporating a location layer My Town has more than three million players who spend an average of almost an hour a day on the game As with Gowalla or foursquare My Town players check in to real physical locations like bars cafes malls or any other venue They earn virtual recognition for frequent check ins to a locale such as earning badges Gowalla or earning topdog spot and becoming mayor of the JANICE PARTYKA Contributing Editor for Wireless location foursquare Some of these apps help locate nearby friends and provide offers from the merchants In the case of My Town check ins are part of game play help locate friends and reveal the 20 most popular places nearby Booyah uses Google Places for its location I asked Cho about the accuracy The location is not accurate under 10 meters were seeing accuracy in 10 50 meters but it is still good Another mobile game company says better location accuracy will open up a new category of mobile games More precise location accuracy is needed for some scavenger hunts and games that revolve around clues that are geocoded or require the user to be in a very specific geo spot Hiden Seek anyone Many other categories of mobile apps hope mobile advertising will bring significant revenue My Town users interact with brands by bar coding products like Pantene shampoo bottles to unlock clues in the game The campaign has yielded more than 225000 bar code scans of Pantene Its not clear if that translates into shampoo sales but I gather Pantene is happy Speaking of Checking in From all the buzz generated by people checking into a particular venue to become mayor pick up medals or find friends youd think checking in has become a contagion Nope it isnt viral yet Another study concludes that mobile location services like Gowalla or foursquare havent yet caught fire This time the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that only 4 percent of online adults use location based social applications If this sounds a bit familiar every so often a research report tells us something similar despite the apparent popularity of check in apps Pew tells us that the checker inners are more apt to be male with 6 percent of online men using it compared to 3 percent of women Given the larger uptake of smartphones in the Hispanic community it isnt too surprisingly they are checking in more 10 percent of online Hispanic males are checking in compared to 5 percent of African Americans and 3 percent of Caucasians Mark DiPaola of CheckPoints says Gone is the novelty of checking in simply for bragging rights Consumers will require real value in exchange for their attention and participation What Loopt Adds Loopt released a new version of its social media location sharing mobile application making it easier to constantly share ones location with selected people even if the application isnt open It also unveiled an app that will automatically texts friends with messages like Im here or Be right there Google Chokehold Mobile applications look to advertising for the mainstay of revenues Is anyone surprised that Google is getting a chokehold on mobile ad inventory It controlled 486 percent of the U S mobile ad market before purchasing mobile advertising network AdMob last year By the end of this year IDC projects Google will represent 59 percent of the market Apple purchased mobile ad network Quattro this year but will likely end 2010 with an 84 percent share See www gpsworld com wireless opinions or subscribe at www gpsworld com subscribe for more Partyka wireless perspectives GPS World January 2011 www gpsworld com 26