LBS LATAM 2010

Two events in the LBS industry I’ll attend and why you can’t miss them

LBS LATAM – The First Location Based Services Conference for Latin America in Miami – 09/17 Miami, FL
Metaplaces – How to Monetize Location Data and Services 09/22-23 San Jose CA

Almost a year ago in my first post, I wrote that Location Based Services are the company’s effort to transform geographical positioning information into valuable and relevant data for a customer, to make a profit. Since then I had the opportunity to talk, work and advise leading companies in the industry regarding new products and services in the LBS arena.

LBS are very similar to other businesses in the sense that in order to succeed you need a solid revenue model and a clear value proposition. Sounds simple; but when approaching the LBS market and trying to understand the dynamics of its Value Chain the troubles begin. Many companies are getting this right and are already making profits. Others try to migrate WEB2.0 applications to the mobile world and discover later that in this environment “Free” is an expensive term. No wonder VCs usually look at maps as a feature and not something to build a whole application around.
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Four Marketing Executives on Location Based Technologies

I have the privilege of belonging to MENG, the Marketing Executive Networking Group. MENG is a national network of top-level marketing executives.
Last week I asked four senior marketing executives from the network how Location Based Services and Technologies will affect their practices.
Without more introduction, here are their shots.
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First post – Marketing and the Location Based Services Concept

Back in business school, we learned about “The Marketing Concept” as the total company effort to satisfy customer needs at a profit.

Location based services are booming and as marketing professionals, we have real challenges on how to integrate these new technologies to our tool set together with Wikis, Blogs, Social Networks, Podcasts, etc. Are you ready for new ideas like Location Based Advertising?

From a business perspective, I would define the “Location Based Service concept” as the company’s effort to transform geographical positioning information into valuable and relevant data for a customer, to make a profit.

The Location Based Service concept, like the marketing concept has 3 components

1- Get Geographical positioning information. This can be accomplished in many ways. The obvious way is a GPS device through cellular network, IP address mapping, user input, etc. (will address this in future posts)

2- Transform this data into valuable information. Your kids are calling for a pickup at midnight; would you consider the same situation knowing they are at a friend house or wandering
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