Are Location-based services too early ?

Today while reading blog news with Google Reader, I hit the report from TechCrunch about the shutdown of another location-based service: Meetro.



Here's the functional description of Meetro for the post in TechCrunch:

To those of you not familiar with Meetro, we were one of the first location-based social networks. We figured out where you were physically and then we would tell you else was around you in real-time. You would then be able to instant message with them, check out their profiles, and hopefully meet up. Other functionality included telling you about restaurants close by, media created nearby, and various local information that pertained to your location. We also supported all your various instant messaging protocols (AIM, MSN, Yahoo) and a slew of other social features.

And the telling quote is: "Even with a robust product we simply couldn’t capture enough market share". This echoes by own words in the interview I gave Austin Hill on his blog.

Seems the physical location problem is an interesting problem but very difficult to get right. And I think it has to do with the dilution of the network. When you launch a location-based service (LBS) on the internet, it is accessible world-wide. You have users (aka internet friends) from every part of the globe.

However a LBS real value is proximity of your network, so the service can detect and properly tell you who's nearby. When you user base is widely located, these functions, although very interesting on paper, do not work. Thus the value of your service is widely diminished and so is it's stickiness.

Dodgeball tried it and they failed, Kakiloc (us) tried it and we failed and now Meetro is joining the bench.

Brightkite is having a go a it right now. However looking at my friends statuses, only a few of them are actively using it. The others (early adopters) came, look and went away. I argue that most of the false-traction that Brightkite is having now is from those early adopters but the stickiness is not there yet. They have real nice interfaces to the service and a very cool iPhone web application as well. Still I'm not convinced on the success until they implement the key elements.

If you are building another location-based service, you should learn from these post-mortem experiences and you should really leverage other services that can help you move forward. The FireEagle service is one of them.

As for me, I'm currently parked on the Falkland Islands within BrightKite until they send me a message in a bottle that they fully support FireEagle.

Happy location reporting - Martin

Blogged with

Apple World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) is sold out.

For the first time in it's history, the WWDC is sold out. I think this is a clear indication of the popularity of the iPhone and the associated SDK.

The opening of the Apple AppStore (in June ?) will surely be very interesting as eager indie developers rush out to be first to market with new and cheap (99 cents) application for the iPhone.

I was also toying with the idea of attending WWDC to get insight on the iPhone SDK.

This is surely a hot space to watch given the number of new mobile providers that have signed on to distribute the iPhone (Canada - Rogers being one of them).

Happy location reporting - Martin

Apple releases the fifth version of the iPhone SDK

Well Apple is very quick to turn out new revisions of it's iPhone SDK. They just released the 5th version of the SDK available for download here.

Apple is clearly sending a signal that it wants this to be very successful and keeps stabilizing and updating the SDK in a very agile manner.



Happy location reporting - Martin

Location is everywhere

A very nice post by Chris Messina about the increase in awareness and popularity of location and location-based services applied to web and iPhone applications.

Here's an excerpt:

... I think we’re on the brink of seeing the kind of the ubiquity (in the consumer space) that we need in order to start taking the availability of location information for granted, and, that, like standards-compliant browsers, it could (or should) really inform the way that we build out the social fabric of web applications from thence forward.

I think this is a very good article but Chris forgot to mention FireEagle which is starting to provide some of the layers we need to truly built innovative location-based applications.

Happy location reporting - Martin

Reportage - Checkpoint

The development of the native iPhone application "Reportage" is progressing slowly. The transition from Ruby to Objective-C takes a little time to get used to.

But I really like the development environment provided by Apple (XCode / Interface Builder) and especially the stability of the 4th release of the SDK.

Here's a screenshot of the Reportage icon on the iPhone Home page. I'll continue posting progress on the development of "Reportage". Stay tuned.



Happy location reporting - Martin

Zero-gravity architecture aka Architecture Astronauts

Joel Spolsky just published this new piece about Architecture Astronauts and the new Microsoft Live Mesh product offering.

Personally I would prefer to call it "Zero-gravity architecture" because it floats and never produces anything concrete. The piece is really good and I fully agree with Joel.

Here's a nice excerpt:

But Windows Live Mesh is not just a way to synchronize files. That's just the sample app. It's a whole goddamned architecture, with an API and developer tools and in insane diagram showing all the nifty layers of acronyms, and it seems like the chief astronauts at Microsoft literally expect this to be their gigantic platform in the sky which will take over when Windows becomes irrelevant on the desktop

But please go read it online, it is quite eye opening.

Happy location reporting - Martin

Reportage - The Splash Screen

Here's the splash screen for Reportage.



But according to the iPhone User Interface Guidelines, application should not have a splash screen, so this is going into the credits section then.

Coming soon for your iPhone
Happy location reporting - Martin

Reportage en cours...

Coming soon for the iPhone...

Happy location reporting - Martin