The location-based discovery service, which offers merchants free access to analytics and admin tools, is now enabling businesses to claim and verify their locations instantly for a one-time $10 fee.
The free option, which includes snail mail, best I can tell, can take a few weeks. And, those are weeks businesses can't offer specials and other goodies via the SoLoMo service. No, Foursquare does not expect this to be a big money maker.
- VentureBeat
It's been a full year since PayPal bought WHERE, the Boston-based LBS/Ad/App business. What's new? A name change for WhereAds to the PayPal Media Network which Walt Doyle, former CEO of WHERE, now GM of PayPal Media Network describes as a "dynamic multi-channel advertising platform built to serve our retail partners during a time of immense change in consumer behavior.”
- Bostinno
Ready for a roundup on the state of Foursquare, Google Latitiude, Facebook and Yelp in their quest for LBS startdom? Computerworld gives is a shot.
What follows is a look at the background and differing approaches of four major social media platforms that provide LBS, with a special eye to what it all means for businesses that are looking to connect to customers. Two of the four networks, Foursquare and Google Latitude, are completely location-based; the other two, Facebook and Yelp, are social networks that have incorporated location-based services into their existing infrastructures.
- Computerworld
by Adena Schutzberg on 05/03 at 06:30 AM |
Comments |
According to the Washington Post, the impending initial public offering (IPO) by Facebook, with its expected windfall of cash from investors, might encourage some employees to go looking for housing. But the prospective home buyers are a bit picky. You see, they might not want to live next to someone who works for Google, for example, or any other competitor for that matter.
“You get a Yahoo guy against a Facebook guy against a Zynga guy against an Apple guy against a Google guy, then it's not just about the house,” real estate agent Carol Rodoni told the paper. “It's about the egos.”
So, how might you go looking for a house that wasn't near a competitor. Well, without violating privacy laws, might you start by see how your friends (...and their friends) are using location-based social media? If people are checking in with Google+ might they be a Google employee versus someone who is a checking in with Facebook Places? If they check in with foursquare does that mean they lean one way or another? What about Tweets with location enabled? Could you mine Tweets that indicate that a neighborhood favors Apple products and thus indicates an enclave of Apple employees, that is, given a proximal location to Cupertino, for example.
Seems like a great opportunity to map neighborhoods by social media preferences. Although mining that kind of "big data" could mean you might need a database appliance. Or maybe someone will come up with a simple solution that we might find in the app store soon? But which app store?
Think about it.
by Joe Francica on 02/01 at 11:15 AM |
Comments |
