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
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