Location Based Services: more than games?

Last week Face­book released its much antic­i­pated addi­tion to the blos­som­ing GPS based checkin appli­ca­tions. In light of that release I’ve decided to spend some time tak­ing a look at why you need to care about loca­tion based ser­vices and more impor­tantly their applic­a­bil­ity to work­ing artists.

While many of the appli­ca­tions are exclu­sively geared to smart phone ( iP0d touch included for this arti­cle) users, that fact should not deter their use by artists. Every indi­ca­tion is that Loca­tion Based Ser­vices (LBS) can become extremely use­ful tools for small busi­nesses espe­cially around their social media and con­nec­tion strategies.

So, with spe­cial empha­sis on usable fea­tures for artists I’m going to start with what these apps do and how their use poten­tial can be adapted for artists. I’ll also dive into their lim­i­ta­tions and finally strate­gies for using them effectively.

Smart phones started it all

As with most inno­va­tions, these apps sprang from another inno­va­tion that set the stage, they are all based on GPS tech­nol­ogy but, and this is an impor­tant but, GPS in and of itself was not enough. The tech­nol­ogy was based on find­ing a loca­tion or des­ti­na­tion rel­a­tive to your present loca­tion, it wasn’t until Smart Phones adopted the tech­nol­ogy that  it became fea­si­ble for  busi­nesses and peo­ple to use GPS as a way to com­mu­ni­cate with oth­ers by let­ting them know they were very close by. You might say it enabled a sort of reverse use of GPS.

Ini­tially launched as scav­enger hunt styled social games and means for friends to find each other, it wasn’t long before savvy busi­nesses real­ized how effec­tive the smart phone tools could be for bring­ing cus­tomers to their doors. The really savvy busi­nesses cre­ated con­nec­tions with their fol­low­ers from direct involve­ment at a per­sonal level, the games were sim­ply a vis­i­bil­ity tool.

GPS enabled smart phones and LBS apps  are  per­fect tool for artists’ vis­i­bil­ity… until now it has been hard for artists to pro­mote them­selves through  links to  off-line venues. We’ve gen­er­ally had to rely on old school meth­ods using post cards, list­ing on web sites and word of mouth. Now, we have the abil­ity to con­nect our­selves with a venue and use that rela­tion­ship to bring peo­ple to us instead of hop­ing for a chance discovery.

So, with this in mind let’s take a look at the ser­vices, with atten­tion to their use by artists who may or may not have access to a smart phone. While each LBS relies on users who posses smart phones, set­ting up your list­ing and using it to con­nect with your buy­ers,  does not uni­ver­sally require a smart phone.

Before we start…

While these ser­vices offer some very real oppor­tu­ni­ties, remem­ber whether and how you decide to use them should orig­i­nate from your busi­ness goals. More impor­tantly, your vis­i­bil­ity goals and specif­i­cally how LBS fit into your vis­i­bil­ity strat­egy. I’ll cover goals and strat­egy after we get a look at the ser­vices and their poten­tial uses for artists.

Even though these appli­ca­tions depend on users with GPS equipped smart phones or (iPod touch) one of my  prime con­sid­er­a­tions in review­ing them is their over all use­ful­ness for artists espe­cially for non-smart owners.

Yelp

Think of Yelp as an on line ver­sion of the yel­low pages that includes, event list­ings, and much more detailed busi­ness list­ings. Busi­nesses can list them­selves if they have a base as in a store front or mul­ti­ple loca­tions and the list­ings offer users the hance to con­nect with businesses/events by leav­ing com­ments and rat­ings on the list­ing page.

Fea­tures

• Social Media con­nec­tions are lim­ited to cus­tomer reviews and rankings;
• Mobile apps for both iPhone and Android based smart phones;
• Search by key words and categories;
• Invite friends via e-mail;
• list­ings in other locations;
• Locations/venues linked via Google maps;
• Businesses/events can pro­vide exten­sive infor­ma­tion about them­selves by way of their pro­file, and can be found by way of searches.

Artists Use­ful­ness

• Review fea­ture gives artists an oppor­tu­nity to con­nect directly with their buyers;
• Busi­ness list­ing can increase search engines potential;
• Non-smart phone access via browser;
• Advance list­ing of sales venues;
• Exten­sive busi­ness description/profile;
• Photo upload;
• Wide vis­i­bil­ity because of Yelp’s local focus.

Brightkite

As an LBS Brightkite does more than sim­ply pro­vide a way for peo­ple to check-in at a spe­cific loca­tion, through its web site it also offers easy account set up and asso­ci­a­tion with a spe­cific geo­graphic loca­tion. Users wish­ing to check in at a par­tic­u­lar des­ti­na­tion that matches your cur­rent loca­tion will see your list­ing among their check-in choices.

Fea­tures

• Cre­ate posts when you check-in or to share info, in the case of artists share info about your venue;
• Add favorite places or friends;
• Find friends at the same location;
• Men­tions, very sim­i­lar to Twit­ter re-tweets;
• Group tex­ting, allows a group to carry on a con­ver­sa­tion or sim­ply notify each other of their location;
• Event set up and broadcast;
• Con­nec­tion to social media.

Artist use­abi­l­abilty

• Browser set up and loca­tion asso­ci­a­tion at any time;
• Access through web site at any­time to update your status;
• Photo upload at any­time for any location;
• Invite friends and asso­ciate them with your locations;
• Cre­ate events and asso­ciate them with your loca­tion and friends.

Foursquare

This appli­ca­tion has become a highly pop­u­lar “check-in” ser­vice that has also grown into a vir­tual “loy­alty” card sim­i­lar to the punch cards used by cof­fee shops. Star­bucks is the most noted user offer­ing dis­counts to cus­tomers who reg­u­larly check in.

Unlike Yelp and Brightkite busi­nesses not auto­mat­i­cally dis­cov­ered via GPS need to sub­mit their infor­ma­tion to the folks at Foursquare in advance and await for approval before it is listed.

Fea­tures

• Add  and locate friends nearby;
• Wide array of add-on appli­ca­tions that help locate every­thing from friends to restrooms;
• Add tips about a place;
• Con­nects to Face­book and Twitter.

Artist friend­li­ness

• Social media con­nec­tion allows for friends to locate artists if their venue is listed;
• Not easy to have a venue listed if it is not found by GPS (which is the case for most art fairs);
• Pri­mar­ily lim­ited to smart phone users;
• Check in via web browser not possible;

Gowalla

Gowalla is sim­i­lar in many ways to Foursquare dif­fer­e­ing only in its abil­ity to be used by busi­nesses and event pro­duc­ers to set up tours or “trips”. Using this fea­ture an art fair pro­moter could link pro­mo­tions to attend­ing artists by high­light­ing artists by medium, loca­tion etc. Many com­mu­ni­ties and non-profit arts orga­ni­za­tions cur­rently use Gowalla as a way to guide vis­i­tors to his­toric loca­tions or artist studios.

Fea­tures

• Check-in via places;
• Place badges;
• Social media links;
• Photo uploads;
• Place claim­ing lim­ited to actual checkin at the location;
• Place can be requested by con­tact­ing Gowalla’s cus­tomer support;
• Place lisit­ngs include Google map and web site links.

Artist friend­li­ness

Because of the dif­fi­culty asso­ci­ated with list­ing a place Gowalla ranks low in use­ful­ness to artists espe­cially art fair artists. There is one excep­tion, if an art fair pro­moter has listed their event a par­tic­i­pat­ing artist can then check-in, how­ever, check-in is lim­ited to smart phone users.

Loopt

This service/application is sort of a mashup of other ser­vices fea­tures, it allows you to set up places in advance, con­nect your frieinds to those places through invi­ta­tion as well as pro­vid­ing a wide range of pri­vacy features.

Fea­tures

• Link friends to your places;
• Add e-mail addresses of friends;
• Cre­ate a jour­nal around your places and include maps, pho­tos etc.
• Con­nect to social media;
• RSS feed;
• Wid­get avail­able for use on blog or web site;

Artist Usabil­ity

• Advance set up of places via browser;
• Jour­nal pro­vides a means to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about your expe­ri­ence at an art fair for exam­ple as well upload pho­tos. The jour­nal also offers a way to build antic­i­pa­tion sim­i­lar to a small social network.
• An easy way for artists to list their sales venues through Google maps and GPS all in advance of their attendance.
• The avail­able wid­get gives artists a chance to link to their Loopt places from their blog or web site and in the process widen the scope of their visibility.

Face­book places

When Face­book launched its Places app it placed itself not only in the widen­ing col­lec­tion of LBSs it also set itself up in direct com­pe­ti­tion with Foursquare. How­ever, despite its sur­face appear­ance as just another “check-in” toy, the sim­ple fact that it links directly to your face­book account gives users  a big advantage.

That said there are lim­i­ta­tions to its use­ful­ness for artists mostly because of the application’s infancy. There are many rumors about pend­ing fea­ture releases that include link ups with other com­pli­men­tary appli­ca­tions. At this point the pri­mary lim­i­ta­tion for artists is the absence of easy non-smart phone set up and check in. Cur­rently, non-smartphone check-ins can be made via Facebook’s “touch” appli­ca­tion, how­ever, my own test­ing found that avenue not exactly user friendly.

At this point, I’ll hold off review of Face­book Places for the future, when it hope­fully becomes more friendly.