Some of the Faces of Geo-Loco 2010

Below are some of the faces from Wednesday's Geo-Loco Conference in San Francisco, an event dedicated to discussing the latest in location-based services (LBS).

Geo-Loco Hosts/Producers Matt Weeks & Mark Evans and Ryan Brenner, GigaOm

Tom Coates and Andreas Weigend

Di Ann Eisnor from Waze and Blair Swedeen of Placecast

Dr. Phil Hendrix and John Battelle

Matt Galligan of Simple Geo and Urban Mapping's Ian White

Stewart Alsop and Fred Wilson

Liz Gannes from GigaOm and Moby Picture's Mathys van Abbe

Fred Wilson doing keynote

Whose shoes you ask? Battelle and Wilson

Scoble Greets Wilson and Michael Liebhold of Institute for the Future

Ryan McIntyre and Mapquest Founder Perry Evans

Scoble greets Wilson, Bubbalon's Todd Hamilton and Alex Galkin

Matt Weeks and Lior Ron from Google

Marc Prioleau

Big Brands and It's the Content Stupid panels

Engaging the Geo-Loco Consumer

This past week in San Francisco, Stewart Alsop of Alsop Louie-Partners moderated a Geo-Loco panel which included the founder of Mapquest Perry Evans (now the CEO of Closely), Blair Swedeen of Placecast, Rob Lawson of Brightkite, Rahul Sonnad of Geodelic and Kent Lindstrom of PlacePop.

Stewart asked the panelists what was the number one thing they have done to engage consumers that they are the most proud of?

Swedeen says, "since we offer an opt-in marketing solution for marketers, we have gotten people to opt in and give people the ability to reach anyone through any phone, whenever they’re nearby a store or a venue. So for example, we can deliver content on urban hiking trails while you're near a trail.

Lindstrom says, "providing virtual loyalty cards to businesses.

Sonnad says, "if you’re on the Hollywood hall of fame where all the stars are, the star you are closest to will show up right away while you’re there.”

Evans says, "to win with a consumer app, you have to save them time or money or get them to EGO or FUN. Foursquare appeals to your ego - ego is why a lot of people tweet or check into Foursquare.”

Fred Wilson Insights; Robert Scoble Wrap Up on #geoloco2010

Below are Fred Wilson's insights from his keynote this past week at the Geo-Loco Conference in San Francisco. Immediately below them is a wrap-up summary on video from Robert Scoble.

"You should be able to give permission for how your information is used. An issue with large companies like Google is that they just may not be that capable of building private location-based services because their social graphs are not tuned for this kind of activity. When people start revealing their data, they want to know on day one that they get to define the terms and what they want to share and with who. There's an advantage for start-ups and the entrepreneurs over the big companies, because the big companies have to roll back and undo the permissions you may have already granted."

"How do you turn these services into businesses? Knowing where someone is in real-time right now if you have context about that, is an incredibly valuable marketing opportunity: it’s the holy grail for a merchant. If a merchant knows you’re nearby, they can make an offer or offer a coupon at the time when they're highly incentivized to do so.

Revenue models around these businesses are fairly straight forward. There will be resellers and aggregators who create value for these services. I’m not worried about how you make money with these services, because those problems pale in my mind compared to the challenges around privacy, incentivizing user behavior and creating value for people for sharing that data."

"What excites me is this: What if all the world history books were archived and integrated with a service like outside in and I could see what happened right here at the point where I’m standing in Rome 500 years ago?

When I go to a museum, there’s always a guided tour of the museum, but it’s the museum’s curated tour. What I’d love to be able to do is get Lou Reed’s private tour and another day, someone else’s private tour of a museum, or a walking tour of London. There are a lot of opportunities combining audio and mobile, as well as geo-tagging to create highly personalized curated experiences at places like museums."

"I love the idea of open APIs but open APIs should also come with monetization – they go hand in hand. The API should monetize in the same way a site monetizes. You can’t just have an open API and not have it make money. Don’t try to hoard the data; use the data to get the monetization out into the marketplace."

"The checkin will be a commodity if it isn’t already. You can get a Twitter style update on Yammer and Facebook, but that hasn’t stopped Twitter from being a large network that continues to grow and become more and more interesting every day. The same thing is true with checkins -- you’ll get checks in Yelp and Facebook, but it doesn’t mean that the checkin services are in danger of not being monetized. What really matters is what’s behind the checkin. Can I protect my data, can I get valuable offers from doing this, where are my friends checking in? It’s all the other stuff that’s behind the checkin that creates the value to the consumers and to the brands. The tweet or checkin gets invented, the social bookmark gets invented -- ALL of these social gestures get invented AND they get copied by everyone, but the innovator of that social gesture has gone on to build a really good business on the back of it. Commoditizing these "copying of social gestures" will not take the value of these gestures themselves."

Below is Robert's recap/summary:

John Battelle Interviews Fred Wilson

At the Geo-Loco Conference this week in San Francisco, John Battelle interviewed VC Fred Wilson on stage, including the 'word game' - see results below:

JB: Research in motion – FW: Not good

JB: Facebook – FW: Juggernaut

JB: Gowalla – FW: It’s tough being the second fiddle

JB: Hewlett Packard – FW: Great company

JB: HP Palm - FW: Great acquisition

JB: Microsoft – FW: Dinosaur

JB: Apple – FW: Evil

JB: Boxee - FW: Promise

JB: Google – FW: Challenged (John asks: does Google have the DNA as a company or should they let someone else light it up for them? And on what they should do? Fred says they should buy Facebook.

Below are three videos of the interview in nearly all its entirety.

Fred Wilson on the Future of Geo-Location Based Services

Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson did the keynote at today's Geo-Loco Conference in San Francisco. Fred addressed current trends across the geo-location landscape and what the future will hold for LBS. He also shared his investment perspectives as well as where he sees opportunities going and why based on the way the market is currently evolving.

Geo-Location: Addictive & Novel & Yes, Exploding

There's no question that the hype in geo-location services is growing but what about actual users?

Six months ago, Gowalla's buzz was climbing. Many Foursquare users switched to Gowalla and others (social media addicts) used both, as if doing regular tweets, and daily or weekly updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, Ning updates and blog posts isn't enough. After all, why not have that dinner date hold off on a real conversation for just a few more minutes while you anxiously get out your Blackberry or iPhone and check into TWO geo-location services and perhaps send out a Tweet while you're at it. After all, your dinner companion is looking at the wine menu anyway.

I've actually found myself in that situation before -- on the doing it side -- AND on the receiving side. Both are not very pretty.

Yet, services like Foursquare and Gowalla are addictive because not only do they allow you to connect with friends like you do on Twitter, but there's a social gaming component to it as well. I'm losing my mayor status in Munich so I understand, but I still carry mayor status at a few San Francisco joints despite the fact that the owners don't know or care.

That said, some venues do care and attitudes of others may change when they realize the value of addictive-natured customers who will throw their status to the wind and do it often to get the occasional free drink and the brightly colored badges that tout their esteemed mayorship. After all if you don't have the clout or perseverance to become a mayor in your real-life, why not kill yourself by pushing buttons on a regular basis to hold court online?

RJMetrics CEO Robert Moore contributed his findings to TechCrunch this week on a study that shows Foursquare's growth compared to Gowalla. Foursquare is not only 5x larger than Gowalla, but it is growing 75% faster every day.

Below are some of the results from their study:

* As of today, Foursquare has just over 1.9 Million users. Gowalla has around 340,000. * At its current pace, Foursquare will surpass 2 Million users within a week. * Foursquare is adding almost 10x as many new users per day as Gowalla and, despite a significantly larger base, has a daily percentage growth rate that is 75% higher than Gowalla’s. * Currently, Foursquare has about 5.6 Million venues and Gowalla has 1.4 Million venues. * 1 in 3 venues on Foursquare have been checked into only once or never. That number is 1 in 4 on Gowalla. * The most popular venue name is “Home,” followed by national fast food chains like “McDonald’s” and “Burger King”. * On Foursquare, men outnumber women almost 2-to-1. Exact gender breakouts are not available for Gowalla, but the most popular first names suggest a similar distribution. * Foursquare has just over 1.9 Million users. Gowalla has around 340,000.

Over the past month, Foursquare averaged 12,900 new users per day, while Gowalla only averaged 1,370. Take a look at the chart below to get an idea of growth stats - more charts presented in yesterday's TechCrunch piece.

Also refer to ReadWriteWeb's post on the Foursquare announcement to add Location Layers earlier this week. If local to Silicon Valley, check out the upcoming Geo-Loco event on July 21, 2010 in San Francisco. Discounted tickets still available at 33% off for Down the Avenue readers.

Where's the Money in Geo-Loco?

Wondering where the money is in geo-loco aka geo-location services? Curious what players have traction or perceived traction? The July 21, 2010 San Francisco-based event: Geo-Loco Conference 2010 will include opinions and insights from investors, entrepreneurs and the big brands who control the spend, and are leading the investment and innovation from all sides.

Developers and business executives have an opportunity to learn about the new breed of infrastructure companies who are helping to drive the geo-location revolution, and dig-into the latest SDKs, API and integration mash-up technologies.

The event is specifically targeting big brands and large franchises, small businesses and service providers, advertising agencies, advertisers and marketers, investors, venture capitalists, strategic partners and of course infrastructure providers.

Readers of Down the Avenue and We Blog the World are being offered a 33% discount -- register now to take advantage of the discount, which is sure to sell out quickly given the growing hype and interest.

There are no lightweight speakers in this great line-up:

- Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures (Keynote)

- Robert Scoble, Rackspace

- Keith Lee, Booyah (MyTown)

- David Thacker, Greylock Partners

- Dev Khare, Venrock

- Matt Galligan, SimpleGeo

- Andy Ellwood, Gowalla

- Rob Lawson, Brightkite

- Perry Evans, founder MapQuest and Closely

- Gary Gale, Nokia

MobileBeat Startup Competition Finalists Unveiled

VentureBeat's Matt Marshall announced the MobileBeat 2010 Startup Competition finalists today.

Over 200 companies submitted applications and only twenty have been chosen, the favorites being Snaptu and Aava Mobile from an online poll.

The finalists will unveil their latest and greatest on stage at the upcoming MobileBeat Conference in San Francisco on July 12-13, 2010.

You can register here and once you register, you can get a sneak preview of the stealth-mode mobile startups.

Snaptu turns your favorite websites into ultra fast mobile apps that work on your phone.

Aava Mobile gives mobile operators and phone makers the ability develop hardware to tap into consumer fashions and trends.

POIdo is a pay-per-action location-based advertising platform that provides ads targeted to mobile and Web users’ location, context and behavior.

Call Loop uses voice broadcasting and text messages to develop integrated marketing campaigns.

AFK enables social and multiplayer game publishers to enable key features of their products on mobile devices.

Micello powers the hyperlocal location-based services ecosystem.

BlogRadio is a text-to-speech app that allows users to listen to any blog, any time, anywhere.

Locomatix enables brands to build their own location-based apps and create new services for existing local content aggregators.

Vaayoo SocialBox allows users to share photos, videos, and audio from a mobile phone -- and automatically backs up all this content online.

Mytalk allows you to connect with other people based on location and similar interests, as well as with businesses.

Edupath is a boot camp for test prep that can be used remotely anytime, anywhere.

Emantras is a mobile-learning tool that makes educational content available to educators both on and offline.

AppCitylife combines the functionality of the yellow pages, Fodors, and 311 with local promotions and content.

Motolingo is a mobile-apps provider that connects your fuel tank and other car data with the cloud for smarter service and travel.

Social Media on a Sunday Afternoon: Only in the Bay Area

Yesterday afternoon, I was having a smoothie with a friend from out of town near San Francisco's Delores Park. He is a technology entrepreneur who had an exit a few months ago and is now exploring ideas for his next gig. He said to me as I was checking into Foursquare: "I use it, I like it, I get it, but I use it as more of a social experiment. I already know where the friends I really care about are and don't need Foursquare or Gowalla for that." Or something to that effect.

He sees the real value which he feels is still untapped, is giving people a more targeted and relevant way to meet up with people you don't know, whether its for dating or new friendships. Foursquare doesn't solve that or at least I wouldn't want it to in its current form. That said, there are dozens of people who try to connect with me on Foursquare daily who don't know me, have never met me nor are likely to. It feels like stalking behavior and frankly, if they don't know me, I keep thinking - it's not Facebook, it's not Twitter, it's not MeetUp, it's not a dating service - get a life people.

While I don't entirely agree with my pal, the real value to me is when I'm at an event. Look at the tremendous benefit from geo-location services and sentiment at SXSW this year.....Twitter addicts used Twitter & Gowalla more during the week since it made more sense to and after they returned home, continued with their typical Twitter usage patterns. Sadly I did both.

For the most part, I don't find Foursquare as useful in my own city as I do when I'm traveling and often discover a friend is in town the same time I am, and in fact may be a few blocks away. Before he finished his sentence and within two minutes of my "check in", I received a text message from a friend of mine who was lounging in the park across the street from the cafe where we were sipping away at our smoothies. He was with a group of friends and would I like to stop by? And, oh btw, they were doing a social media experiment. Come participate.

Curiosity set in so off we went. Ten minutes later, we found them under an umbrella on a blanket with a massive wedding cake in the middle, covered with flowers. There was a large shopping bag sitting on the blanket with a sign that said "Want a piece of cake?" Their friends, who were honeymooning in Belize had a hashtag set up which they were tracking from....yes, Belize. As for the exercise, people stopped by, had a piece of cake and said kudos & congrats on Twitter using this particular hashtag. It was a fun and creative exercise using social media to send love and congrats through a "device" to people you never met sitting many miles away on a beach.

I had a piece of their wedding cake and said hello. How? Foursquare met text messaging which met a phone call which met Twitter using a hashtag which met a bunch of folks in Belize which then hit Facebook updates all in a matter of ten minutes. Only in the Bay Area my friend, only in the Bay Area.

TechCrunch Turns 5

TechCrunch turns 5 and has an anniversary party at Twilio & SocialGold on Folsom Street in San Francisco. While I didn't really see any TechCrunchers there (they may have been mingling but I just didn't run into any), over 400 people showed up to take part in the celebration that a handful of start-ups sponsored.

Taking part meant PPT karaoke, free beer on one side of the room, boxes of pizza on the other and three hours into the event, a dozen or so bottles of champagne popped open -- all at the same time.

Two other things worth mentioning: Yet again, Foursquare was on the fritz and it took me several attempts to check in AND I ran into people who were either from or had lived in the following countries: Czechoslovakia, Russia, Korea, VietNam, China, Sweden, England, France, Germany, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Japan and Bulgaria.