LBS LATAM 2010

Twitter and Maps – Locating your followers one tweet at a time

Twitter announced the Geotagging API back in August and officially released it by the end of November Twitter applications like Birdfeed, Seesmic Web, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twidroid, Twittelator Pro already support this API.

Three weeks after of the official Geotagging API release I made a quick search looking for applications that use a combination of Twitter and maps. Note that these applications are not necessarily using the Geotagging API. My main interest was to find integrations of twitter and location/maps. SOME of the results are attached to the end of these notes. Note I didn’t try them or endorse here any of those applications. I hope you can leave a comment if you are using any of them.

Looking for answers

After a few days of looking at my word processor’s empty page I remained only with questions (and very few answers). Instead of continuing to look for some insights, let me share with you what I’m trying to understand, may be together we can come up with some logic.

1. If we consider that the reason to put a business, or invest time in development, is to generate revenue, how are those companies going to monetize this map integration?
2. I can understand the business side of collecting information for data mining, but what is the actual added value for a user to see tweets in a map?
3. Twitter makes two things clear. The first is that you can “delete all location data”, and the second is that there is no guarantee the information will be removed from all 3rd party application’s. What about some privacy standards? Are you aware that 3rd parties are storing, using and maybe selling your location? It might be useful to control where employees are twitting from…
4. Asking for business models for applications around twitter is already difficult. Considering the costs of putting a location application, including maps, data transfer and other LBS components, do you have an idea how to monetize this integration?

As I mentioned, I have many other questions. Once you get bored of seeing windows of tweets opening over a map give me a call. May be we can use these features to develop something useful to the users and profitable for the ones investing the efforts.

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Some of the Apps that integrates Twitter and Location / Maps

Following are some of the Twitter + maps apps I found. The challenge was to describe them in 140 characters or less and where possible I added the twitter ID of the developers.

Feel free to “cut and tweet”

Continue reading and see the full list of Twitter and Maps app here Read the rest of this entry »

Location Based Services Value Chain – Part 2

Have you read PART 1? I’ll strongly recommend reading part 1 first.

As mentioned in part 1 the main components in the LBS Value Chain are: the location based service provider or developer (LBS APP), the data carrier (a cellular provider like T-Mobile, AT&T, etc), and the customer.

As Part 3 will talk about Web 2.0 strategies for Location Based Services and particularly for Location Based Social Networking, we need to completely understand every piece of the puzzle. Otherwise your model will be leaking money (pouring in some cases). Moreover understanding the players and trends will allow you to craft long term solid strategies.

A more comprehensive value chain shall include:

Location Based Services complete Value Chain by Claudio Schapsis

MAPS: Most LBS applications utilize maps; therefore their cost shall be added to the equation. The map market can be considered a duopoly dominated by Navteq and Teleatlas.

Consider: those companies were acquired recently by Nokia and TomTom.

Ask: How can they affect your business by controlling the LBS market. Can your application change the map provider easily? Do they cover all the areas you plan to service? Can you grow to other markets (internationally)? Does your international strategy fit your provider’s existing maps? What are their plans of expansion? How are you getting charged? What layers of information are included in that charge? The list of questions doesn’t end here and is closely related on the type of service you are planning to offer.

MAP INTERFACES: If you want to use map providers like Navteq and TeleAtlas you will need to pay a premium price to companies that provide interfaces to those maps – such as Autodesk, Decarta, etc. Your applications can also be based on Google maps (TeleAtlas data) or Microsoft maps (Navteq data) API’s.

…Read the rest of the post