Archive for July, 2010

Check-ins have actually always been social: whether through Foursquare, Gowalla, and whatever other programs that are out there, checking-in and letting your friends know where you are and what you’re up to is just about the most “social” feature available by location-based sevices. So what does it mean when competitor SCVNGR is talking about “social check-ins?” Read the rest of this entry »

Checking in can get old after a while. Checking in, collecting points, checking in, collecting points…Brightkite has had a new idea – or at least it should come across that way. The Californians have enhanced their badges with new levels. Read the rest of this entry »

In an interview with CkickZ News, Foursquare has officially denied that there are no plans for any data partnerships with Google, Yahoo, or Bing as reported by the Daily Telegraph. Read the rest of this entry »

Google seems to be unstoppable. A new Google Images-integrated product has been launched by the search engine giant: Google Image Search Ads. Advertising has now become much more efficient, accessible, and much more visual. Read the rest of this entry »

Foursquare was given an estimated net worth of 100 million US Dollars by investors, who decided to pump in an additional 20 million into the American company. With such a strong support system, the company can surely rest a bit more soundly, but the location-based check-in service will need to use their new capital wisely if they want to keep up with their competitors. Foursquare apparently is one step ahead of us and already has an idea of how to make itself stand out in the crowd: the gaming element of the service should be getting a major facelift to become more entertaining for the user. This information was confirmed by Foursquare engineer Anoop Ranganath in “The Big Money’s Disrupters” podcast. Read the rest of this entry »

Foursquare has been at somewhat of a standstill for quite some time now. The check-in features, which have already been outdone by social-network Twitter’s location features, rating service Yelp’s check-ins, and will probably be looking at the same situation when Facebook releases their own check-in service. So how exactly does Foursquare plan on surviving? The answer is quite simple: gaming. Read the rest of this entry »

First of all, what is geofencing? Basically, it’s a series of virtual perimeters for real-world geographic areas. In other words, geofencing is the process of creating virtual borders for the purpose, of say, being alerted of events in your current area, or perhaps of friends who are around the corner. So what does this mean for location-based technologies? Read the rest of this entry »

Location-based news from messaging portals have been available from meinedtadt.de for some time. Now there will be blogs from cities and communities through “Stadt Aktuell” (Eng. Up-to-date City). So there won’t be just information from local interests, but even content from private blogs and from clubs. Read the rest of this entry »

The latest W3B study from the market development and advising company Fittkau & Maß Consulting revealed some surprising information: 62% of the current internet users on social networks visit the sites on a regular basis (at least once a week) but only 35%, and from this group merely 40% are really active users. The majority is rather passive, in other words, watches from the sidelines. Read the rest of this entry »

Twitter posted recently about the new feature in their blog “Twitter Places”: with the new feature, users can post their mini-messages with their current location. So users no longer have to post their coordinates, as previously required, but can now pick out places such as cafés, or even directly from World Cup stadiums. Read the rest of this entry »