The Archives

Browse the content below to find what you're looking for.

Check-ins, Location Based Marketing and the F’ word

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Starting the year with a smile:-)

Since mid 2010 I’ve been writing a book about Location Based Services (LBS) applied to the marketing practice. While many people exclusively associate Location Based Marketing (LBM) with check-ins applications, the uses of location in marketing goes far beyond that.
This weekend I began the chapter about check-ins. I wanted to open it exploring the motivation behind checking-in. Why are people sharing their location? Exploring this topic I had a little Fun with F words and this is a fine compilation of my notes.

The F* word

Continue the Reading

Happy Holidays and Prosperous New Year – The LBS Way

Tuesday, December 28th, 2010

My best wishes of peace and prosperity.
Check my LBS WAY Card

When Aesop downloaded an app and tried to navigate indoors…

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

“2010 will be the year of LBS”. Well it’s about the end of November and we can start changing the song to “2011 will be the year of LBS”. And as if Location wasn’t enough we added Indoor LBS to the mix. Everybody speaks about Indoor Navigation, and most of them refer to a completely different concept

The business opportunities

Most of the Interactive Maps apps are primarily themed for Malls.

From the marketing perspective and looking at the “mall potential users” we see that only 17% of the population has a smartphone, and close to 31% of mobile internet services users are female. That means only 5.27% of the population are females using mobile internet services. From the total of female smartphone users only around 21.5% use some kind of location services. That leaves us with target market of 1.1% of the mobile phone owners. Mall demographics show that females outnumber males 2:1, and in most cases they shop in places that are familiar to them. That means that about 1 out of 100 customers entering a mall is a POTENTIAL user, and if you consider that these apps are only available for certain phones, the target market is even smaller. Can you imagine a customer that visits the same mall every week, turns on the wi-fi to navigate to a store he/she knows?

Read More

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?
Read More

Indoor Navigation: The new Gold rush? Part-2 – Ecosystem and opportunities.

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Is Indoor navigation a viable business? What are the main business factors that will determine the broad adoption and success of indoor navigation solutions?

A few months ago I wrote an introduction about the opportunities in indoor navigation. Please read the comments as every single one adds an additional piece to the puzzle. My question today focuses more on the business perspective and less on the technical solutions. Who can make it happen? What can we learn from the evolution of Location Based Services in general and Personal Navigation in particular? Read More

The Mobile Marketing Revolution and Location Intelligence – Seminar at Versailles

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Over 120 persons RSVP to the VBC event in Miami

I’ll post my comments here after the event.

If you had the opportunity to participate, I’ll appreciate your feedback. What do you see in this map now?

Thank you!

Claudio Schapsis

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.
Read More

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 NetworksMatch2blue, 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.
Read More

More on Business Models for GPS navigation devices, Location Based Social Networking and RFID applications

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Sundays is usually posting day, today I’ll take a different approach.

I believe one of the most important results in a post is the readers’ comments. They enrich and bring new perspectives to the initial approach. Skipping over those comments and the exchange of ideas is like ordering a banana split and eating only the ice cream.

I would like to refer you to the readers’ contributions on my post on business models for navigation devices combined with social networking. There, new applications were exposed, a few questions remained unanswered (wireless guys, your input please), and there is an amazing exchange of observations on what is Presence Marketing – how to use it combined with Location Based Social Networks, the extension of RFID applications, and Privacy concerns (my next topic).

My remarks on CES and notes on the Privacy Factor on new business models can wait a day or two.

I encourage you to read the comments to the end and most important, leave yours.

I have nothing more to say but THANK YOU!

Press HERE for the post.

Location Based Services Value Chain – Part 3 – Business Models for Location Based Social Networking

Monday, December 15th, 2008

From conversations I had with friends and colleagues, I believe this will be the first of a series of “last parts” regarding business models for Mobile Location Based Services.

I’ll assume through this post that you have read the preceding articles (LBS Marketing Concept / Value Chain 1 / Value Chain 2 / Location Based Social Networks 2.5) as many of the keys for further business models discussions reside there.

In my first post I defined 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 question here is: who is the customer that is willing to pay for that data?

Tim O’Reilly defines in “What is WEB 2.0Data is the next Intel Inside and he presents a key question: Who owns the data? And I would add, What Data?

In the following Business Model the LBS service provider owns the data. I reviewed many Location Based Social Networking sites and in most cases “some kind” of lack of privacy is the base of their business model. Differently from carrier fee based pushed services (top – down), this model is based on bottom-up. The LBS provider enables a platform for people to interact for free. In this scenario the handset is usually subsidized by the carrier, interested in generating traffic. The free service is now growing in viral mode and at this point the customers should be called by their real function: “data collectors”.



— CONTINUE READING THIS POST —