I’ve been having a discussion on Facebook earlier today with a media company about how they can’t see a business application for Four Square, or other location based- applications for smartphones etc that are gps enabled.
Facebook Places:
Face book yesterday (22/08/10) released their version of this software, and given their huge size, it is likely to become the predominant form of it, worldwide. Here’s the official video:
Which, apart from the freshly scrubbed faces and quirky “global” accents, pretty much sums it up.
Obviously, if you have a retail presence this is a very cheap form of customer loyalty rewards – FourSquare offers, badges, pins and so on for users and the businesses associated with those high numbers of check-ins can offer rewards based on their product range or any number of other possibilities.
Air New Zealand has a scheme for the Koru Club lounges, giving away airpoints or free memberships. Mojo Coffee offer free coffees after five visits, and bag of coffee after forty, and hour behind the machine making coffee for one hundred.
It does not take too much imagination to see what effect this might have on such schemes as FlyBuys and their owner Loyalty New Zealand, who collect masses of consumer information in exchange for offering some discounted products and the hint of cheap flights. This is a disruptive technology that will become persuasive in out futures.
- Image via Wikipedia
What do YOU think? – leave a comment below;
Hi there, have you seen any major developments in how Places has been used in NZ so far since launch?
Thanks
Ryan
Thanks for your comment Ryan.
Facebook Places has still not yet been launched in New Zealand, but has been running for a while in US, Canada, AUK and Australia. So I’m sorry I don’t have much research on the local market to pass on.
The reasons are unclear but it’s being speculated that we are a bit small and Facebook like to launch with a critical mass of participants.
It may transpire that while Facebook hesitates Foursquare may steal a march on them and establish themselves in this space in NZ, gaining first-mover advantage and making them that much harder to dislodge. However I think that when they do launch, the burgeoning local Facebook population may mean they are find sufficient uptake to make up for the delay
For some more in-depth discussion, have a look here:
http://nikhillohar.wordpress.com/2011/01/03/facebook-places-in-new-zealand/