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So Facebook added Location. What’s next? Location Based Services for marketers 101

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

Location-enabled social networks are not new. As a matter of fact, there are more than 100 companies providing some type of social networking with location features. Some of them have been integrated with Facebook for a long time. So why are these changes important for marketers and business developers?
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Posted in Blog, Marketing | 5 Comments »

How location will enable milking more money from Social Networks

Tuesday, April 20th, 2010

Why is location changing the business of social networking? Because it is the missing link between virtual societies and the real world. Once I can identify the location of each member of my community, I can easily find ways to make money from it.

The value of Location

Location will open the door to a new level of hyper-targeting. Not only can I target customers who answer to a certain demographic profile, but I can do it based on their location, and I can predict their behavior based on past locations. I can be confident in sending an invitation to a football fan who is close to a sports bar, because I know he likes sports, there is a game and he is not at the stadium. I’ll also extend that invitation to the usual friends he meets on game days. Everyone wins — My users enjoy the opportunity to meet in a place and receive a discount; my customer (the bar) will pay me for having my users coming to their establishment. Read More

Posted in Blog, Featured Article | 2 Comments »

Location in a Cloud – a Unique Approach to Provide Location-Related Information and Services

Thursday, August 27th, 2009

In one of my first posts, I noted that one of the main components of the LBS Value Chain is the ability to acquire and transport a user’s location and give access to that data to many service providers. Getting this information is, in many cases, expensive and presents obstacles to online service providers who would like to develop services based on mobile a user’s location. I was looking for the missing link between the mobile and the web world.

While there are many different approaches (and we might present some of those in the future), Xtify, a company based in New York City, caught my attention. They are creating a cloud of location information where authorized service providers can make available services using the location of their subscribers.

As usual, I was more interested in the business perspective of their operation. The following is a synopsis of my conversation with Josh Rochlin, CEO of Xtify.

I want to thank again Josh for his time and kindness to open up his business for us to learn. I believe many will have much to comment and say.
Follow up.

What is the difference between Xtify and other companies providing similar services?
We are currently the only company that is deriving location persistently from mobile devices and then building business rules around it. We source the location directly from the mobile device, rather than through the wireless carriers. This allows us to make location information available on a persistent and affordable basis.
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Posted in Blog, Business Models | 10 Comments »

GyPSii, Market Approach and Business Models for a Truly Mobile Digital Lifestyle Application

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

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INTRODUCTION:
For a few months I’ve been writing about Location Based Services business models and how to monetize LBS applications, particularly in the newest area of Location Based Social Networks.
I invited a few companies to share their vision and show how they approach this market. I would say it takes leadership and real confidence in your business to open your company strategy for others to learn. It is not surprising that the first company to accept this challenge was GyPSii. They were recently awarded a core patent in mobile social networking, but GyPSii goes beyond the mobile social networking platform, it is a mobile digital lifestyle application.
I had the privilege to share some time with Shane Lennon, GyPSii’s SVP Market Development (Thank you again!). The result of our conversation is summarized in the following text. In my next post I’ll evaluate the interview, add the full interview on podcast, and comment about their market / business approach. In the mean time please leave YOUR comments

Q: Can you please give me a few words about GyPSii, how it started and your perspective of the company?

GyPSii is a global company, unusual for a start-up. The founders are based in Amsterdam. They had a mobile lifestyle vision that’s more than an LBS vision: “I want to capture my world; I want to be able to share with others”. On the technical level, it translates to creating a searchable mobile index of user-generated content based on the actual world. This is different from what you see on Internet today, which is built by companies, indexed on search engines, and driven more from their perspective and less from that of the user.
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Posted in Business Models, Location Based Social Networking | 8 Comments »

Will Location Based Social Networks be like the restaurant business industry? Check their menu!

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

After the long weekend pass and I had the opportunity to summarize many of the emails and twitts received during the last weeks, I was surprised to still find new Location Based Social Networks coming to the market… not. This week I added to my List of Location Based Social Networks:  Match2blue, My Adventures, Snikkr , Mizoon, Nulaz , Toai , and Glympse.

I also found a few social networks closing or going through difficult times and struggling to survive. Then I remembered last Friday I was saddened to find one of my regular lunch places out of business. I just entered the Subway next door and had a sandwich. Today I found a “coming soon” sign at the same place.

Is there any parallel? Certainly there are LBSN for many tastes. There are gourmet types of Social Networks, others that appeal the masses, some that serve particular type of people, some are for dating, some are for business, some you need certain hardware to get in, and others that are by invitation only.

The fact is that in both cases the owners invest a considerable amount of money to get in, they dream to have fun and be unique, and in some cases they understand very little about the business model and end loosing all their savings.
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Posted in Blog, Business Models | 2 Comments »


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