Inside a venue

To promote the launch of IE9 at SXSW, design company Vectorform has built a neat way to visualize Foursquare checkins. In their ‘world’ called Foursquare Playground, you find yourself surrounded by the nearest venues, which enables to to get an overview of what happens around you. With different animations for each type of venue, this should give you an idea of the type of neighbourhood you’re looking at as well as the level of activity in that particular area.

In a very game like layout you can spot new venues around you, each depicted by a building type that would suite the type of location as defined within Foursquare. (Work, home, park, etc.) This whole thing is supposed to be a showoff of the HTML 5 capabilities in IE9 and if you’re not working with this browser Chrome and Safari will do as well. (More support coming up…)

Matrixlike visualization

User information

I would say the downside of this visualisation is twofold: it’s a pure grid-like visualization, while your neighbourhood is probably shaped in a more natural form.

Combine this with the fact that not all blocks in your real life neighbourhood are venues, or that a lot of venues appear twice (or are in the same building) and this makes for a map that doesn’t really represent the place you’re looking at. That aside: it does look really nice and the whole thing might remind you of the Sim City games. Check out the video at the bottom of this article to see the introduction to Foursquare playgrounds by Dominic Espinosa from Vectorform.

# of people present

Aggregated Data

Even though it has it’s shortcomings this is in my opinion a good example of what you can do with aggregated data and yet another sign that data-visualization has a bright future. Hovering over the venues, which vary in size depending on how many checkins it had, will present you with a brief description of the place.

Venues that currently have people checked in will display a number, so you can immediately see where other Foursquare users are around you. Clicking on a building will then display more information, such as an animation of the people that are there. A chest and a painting on the wall are available to see the tips and current mayor of a place, with people that are checked in walking around the place.

Venue information

Bing

Foursquare Playground has, of course, integration with Microsoft’s Bing and could benefit from the rise of Foursquare users and perhaps a way of mapping the rather abstract layout onto Bing maps. This way it could be a friendly and appealing way to view the hotspots around you, although I wonder what the developers are expecting from smartphone users, which seems like the logical platform to do anything location-based.

If this is to be more than an IE9 showcase, there would need to be ‘an app for this’. On Android please, thank you.

I was pondering a reply to some post and thought it would be better to place it here. As it seems that there is more and more talk about what makes social media really social, I wanted to tell you something about some considerations on calling something ‘social media’. As a Sociologist I never really get why people define things as non-social of social in the context of a society or a community. Societies and communities are social constructs, such is commerce. Yes, the rules in the field differ, to refer to Bourdieu somewhat, and yes it’s the problem that ‘old’ commerce often does not get how to act online, but these are all social construct in a social environment.

The biggest mistake about ‘social media’ is to assume there is such a thing as non-social media. One way or the other it’s quite often ‘all or nothing’ for online marketeers: I was discussing this very thing quite recently actually. Either it’s all “let’s crowdsource your SEO via web 2.0″ or “haha, internet that’s all the same, nothing new, new media is a hype”. Both are short term philosophies.

The question “what makes something social” is a valid question, but I feel it is a mistake to define some types of media as “non social” at least for any kind of media that I can think of right now.

I’ve been discussing the possibilities for location based surveys already. As especially reviews are tied to a certain place it’s only natural to at least offer surveys with a location component. The new company Qriously is now offering such a thing: short location based surveys. With this offer they hope to set up a new mobile revenue model and ride the ‘quick insights’ hype on mobile devices.

The question to why people would even go to take a survey is solved by them in to ways. First and foremost they offer their questions as inapp advertisements on mobile devices.

Funding

The location based public opinion tool has recently raised 1.6 million US dollars in a funding round and the seem keen on offering app developers a new way to make money on free mobile apps. As the questions will be displayed as in-app advertisements, much like is already custom on for example Android or Apple’s iOS, they’ve got the question how potential respondents would even get to the survey covered. The actual ‘survey’ consists of a question that can be answered on a slider scale. When answering, they naturally don’t have the leave the application, so this shouldn’t be too much of an extra step in answering questions. As an extra incentive to answer a question Qriously also offers an insight in how others have answered compared to yourself.

the Qriously in-app content

If the questions that people get to answer will remain fairly location based this would give answering some extra relevance to the respondent. We could say that this is the second solution Qriously has found to the engagement problem. Offering relevant surveys to people does good things for the response rate and if they manage to keep questions not only location-dependent but also really relevant to that location this could seriously help completion rates and deliver quick insights. Perhaps the only remaining question is how many people will really want to answer a question while they are in the midst of playing a game or checking their email. The short, easy, format of the questions could be the right way to go at this problem, though especially if they would integrate ways of interacting with the actual game or other type of application, for example in the form of credits. This is both to the benefit of the respondent, who gains an extra reward as well as to the developer who makes his revenue model more usable. Of course Qriously would gain from more integration as well, as completion rates could rise, they would have to weigh this against downside: the extra efforts such an extended app would take.

(image taken from the Qriously website)

Shame on me for coming up with a word-cloud when everyone else has been bugging you with word-clouds for the past year or so. But still it’s quite interesting to see what I’ve been writing about up ’till now. That sharing is a big thing may come as no surprise, although I wasn’t really aware that I’ve been using that word that often. If you want to know what is going to be really hot this year, then it seems like I predict that ‘Location Based’ and Games are the big thing. At least that is true if you assume that I write about things that are still upcoming.

(click to embiggen)

Now that ‘location based’ is becoming more and more of a big thing, the question what we can actually do with it still remains. Just ‘checking in’ to certain places is not much of a business model, as TechCrunch pointed out a while ago. There may just not be enough to it to keep it entertaining enough even though since then offers that go with a check in have increased, also outside the United States. An answer may lie in offering additional services that seem to come to mind naturally when thinking of topics that are relevant to know when at a certain location, such as reviews.

Content is still king in the sense that tying data to certain place (and time) would require the content you’re actually offering to be relevant to that place. Being a mayor in Foursquare is another thing, but there could be much more, that could be way more interesting. Yelp is one of those services that combines reviews with locational data, not a very strange move, since they actually started out as a review service instead of the other way around.

Gaming and promotions

When discussing new possibilities for location based services with some friends we came across the option to do promotions tied to a certain spot. These are of course already available in simple forms, getting a discount for checking in to a location is on of the most ‘pure’ forms of this idea. Going beyond this there is the notion that, coming back to reviews, location based data would be ideal to offer location based surveys or polls to people. This would be an intuitive way to ask for customer experience, to see how and when the atmosphere around a landmark changes to the crowd, and things like that.

As a way to reward people for certain actions, such as taking such a survey a thing that comes to mind is a gaming element tied to points. Whether or not this should be tied to a real life currency is not all that important for the description of this idea. Because I went on to think that maybe a neat crossover of Foursquare or another service like it with Layar would be really cool. Layar offers an extra dimension to reality, where people can load certain ‘layars’ over the camera view on their mobile phone.This way they get an augmented reality to view where the nearest landmarks, possible dates or Twitter users are, for example.

Wouldn’t it be something to tie this in to our idea of location based reviews here? Implementing a layar of our own for this purpose, so people can spot the places where they can do a review survey. A virtual layer over the real world so you can spot your (survey)opportunities through Layars augmented Reality… Of course this this is just a very rough idea, and probably it would be better if this game would offer different opportunities to move up in the game than just posting reviews at locations, but it does give a good view of the amount of possibilities all these new ‘social’ tools give us.

As you might know I have a column in the Dutch radio program “Echte Jannen”. With the start of a new year, I had to do some trend-watching of course, especially after covering the topics of last week in the New Year special (Dutch) the previous day. So here are a couple of things that I think will be important for the coming year, in the Dutch speaking part of the internet and beyond.

1 More apps, less browser

Of course a development like this is relative to other things, we won’t see less browser based content in absolute figures, but the relative number of apps and their influence will grow. Due to the rise of mobile the rise of apps will go on in the next year, not even counting games and the quite recent growth of the number of newspaper applications. Apps are an ideal way to be able to charge for content as well as to avoid browser compatibility issues.

2 Professionalization of advertising

Especially Android users will be familiar with advertisements for mobile, but developments will go further than that. Due to professionalization social media will become a normal part of the marketing mix, you can expect a big rise in new marketeers, who we will suddenly call ‘online marketeers’ as well. That’s not a bad thing per se, as long as you keep risks like too narrow a focus on specific online knowledge in mind.

Besides this, the professionalization will have an impact in the opposite direction for bigger companies. These will put even more budget aside for more daring online marketing actions. Guerilla or viral is not dead for online niches, but it’s the big multinationals that will fuel a continued growth here. This means there are chances for larger new media advertisement companies if you aim at small and medium businesses or, if you want to aim at the multinationals, for niche, daring, advertisement agencies.

3 Twittercode

Your complaints may not be any different from those you express at the water-cooler, we will see more Twittercodes at companies. A Twittercode in this sense is a social media code of conduct for employees, to restrict them in what they can say about, for example, their employer online. In the US we can see that restrictive codes are put to the test, and we might see companies abandoning (some) for common sense. In the Netherlands though, or Europe as a whole, we will see the first examples of Twittercodes for employees soon enough.

4 Data visualization

The data that is available online continues to grow, that’s no secret. Data will be more complex as well, especially if the linking of data becomes the semantic web. this could mean a golden age for journalists, visual artists or any other job position you can come up with in this area: if you know how it ‘works’ online, there are huge opportunities. We need people that can process the huge complex amount of data for us. Newspapers are struggling to keep their subscriptions up, but they might be fighting the wrong game if what they want to do is interpret information.

5 Social Games

There will be real social mobile gaming, think World of Warcraft meets Farmville, on your mobile. The only remaining challenge is making this in usable concept, and we will soon see solutions that try to solve this question.

6 Prosecution of a blogger

See also ‘Twittercode’ above. This might not be a real trend, but we will see the prosecution of yet another blogger, commenter or tweep due to something he or she has said online.

With the new year just started, we can see that many predictions involve location based services, again. After my last post about visualizations I got some mails and other messages, asking what location based services could mean for the future. Most questions referred to which services were actually out there, so to start for 2011 let´s have a quick look at the playing field as it is today. Here is a quick description of the most important services in the, ever changing, field today.

Google Latitude

Google’s service has been around for quite some time already, basically a web application that lets you share your current location with friends. Google quickly introduced a badge to make your location visible to others beyond your usual friends as well, for example by putting it on your blog. While the service works great, I’ve never been really enthusiastic about it, because somehow it feels too unintuitive in its use. Sharing your location is done somewhat on in the background of your current activities, which does make sense in theory but makes you feel disconnected from the service in practice. With the recent introduction of dedicated mobile application Google could get it right this time, if they’re using their muscle to introduce new and better deals than their competitors.

Yelp

Yelp is originally a review service, that added location based features later on to provide extra credibility to reviews people would put up. As such is it perhaps a location based mashup avant la lettre, even though the process with them was the other way around. While others are just coming up with extra services besides just providing location information just now, or are relying more on third parties, Yelp even offered Augmented Reality features quite early on. A weak spot for Yelp could be that they’re not that well known outside the Unites States. Their site is still quite US focused and the service is only fully available in just a few other countries anyway. On the other hand, their hardly seems to be any competition anyway for review-integrated location services, so you might say the rest of the world is still within close reach for Yelp

Facebook Places

Being originally very US focused it is of no surprise that Facebook has started its Places service in just a limited part of our globe. Along with Google Latitude, Places seems to bet on integration with it’s host service, in this case Facebook, though they do offer a separate (iPhone) app and a dedicated Places page that makes it more intuitive to use. With Facebook’s influence spreading more and more, one can only assume that Places will have a bright future. It being part of the larges social network will give Places an advantage in offering deals, both in the partners involved as well as in offering potential rewards to be used within Facebook itself.

Foursquare

Foursquare are they guys to beat in the game, while not having as many users as either Google of Facebook as a whole, they are the leading company in the location based game. Although they offer the possibility to shops and companies to offer their customers deals when checking in to a location, my personal feeling is that this won’t be enough. Foursquare and it’s competitors will have to more actively pursue deals or other services that they can offer their users. And unlike Google or Facebook, Foursquare is a separate service which would need to add extra use for sharing your location besides earning badges if they want to go really mainstream.

Gowalla

Gowalla is the runner up, or are they..? While having less users than Foursquare, Gowalla users are said to be more involved and as for a setup of the service they offer a more solid looking interface. They recently struck a deal with Disney showing that they’re willing to actively pursue new offers for their users. Just like Facebook and Foursquare (’4SQ’) they’re still quite US focused, despite offering their basic service, like 4SQ, basically just everywhere.

SCVNGR

SCVNGR might not be that well known, not even in their ‘homeland’ the US. They do have quite a lot of support from a variety of different organizations, making this a very interesting service to watch in the future indeed.  Slowly but surely expanding their userbase abroad, SCVNGR is especially interesting because they are interesting for they other side of location based services: the venues.

Besides aiming for basic customer loyalty they offer business owners the opportunity to set up challenges for their visitors. Interesting is the additional fact that they offer anyone the opportunity to set up tracks, where you can earn points by following clues and directions from location to location, possibly accompanied by separate challenges.

Out of the game: Brightkite

Brightkite was in on the game quite early on and now they’re out of it again just at what seems to be the real start for location based services. Instead Brightkite is now aiming for grouptext functionalities as their core business. In an interesting move, the founders of the service that might have started it all are now pursueing a new location based offer, Forkly, offering location services around restaurants etcetera.

I had this excellent post by Tim Phillips on Research-Live bookmarked for quite some time, and actually there is not too much that I can add to it. His notion that ‘game changing’ has been rapidly on the rise was something that I noticed as well. I hope he doesn’t want to slap me for the title I’m using for this article (must be really good SEO for me) but I was reminded about his article when I was using Google trends to review some hype words.

It’s actually quite hard to do that because most word combinations like ‘pro active’ have been in use for quite some time, sometimes in a different context as well. A methodology like scrum, on the other hand, is mostly used in rugby to describe something different and doesn’t show up on the radar as clear as ‘game changer’. As Tim showed is has been rapidly on the rise, thus raising the question if there is really anything game changing or if it’s maybe just good old marketing.

Using ‘game changing’ in your bingo game at works seems to have been pretty pointless before 2005, and game changers themselves only appeared in 2007. What is interesting is the ‘game changing’ rapid way these words seemed to have spread.

Images are screenshots taken from Google Trends