by, Lesa Seibert, President, Xstreme Media
2011 is going to be all about local and the continued development of geolocation technologies and the check-in services provided by companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla. A 2010 study conducted by Pew Research concluded that only 4 percent of online adults use a service or mobile app to share their locations with friends, but don't be fooled by those results.
Foursquare alone has more than four million registered users, Gowalla has more than two million and smaller services such as SCVNGR are on the cusp of the one million threshold. The overall adoption of location-based services is going mainstream in 2011, thanks largely to Facebook, and it's 600,000 users.
What was already a growing trend, received an epic boos when Facebook added a Deals feature to its location-based service, Facebook Places. Through Facebook Deals, retailers and merchants will offer discounts to users checking into Facebook from specific locations. Early partners have included the Gap, Starbucks and McDonalds. This is very significant for retailers and merchants along with those in the growing daily deals, local coupons space.
Google's interest in location has also been growing rapidly, most recently with a heavy focus on its local search listings. Businesses in 2011 must take advantage of the new emphasis on location by including their geographic data wherever possible and taking part in local deals promotions when they can.
The maps that show up in Google's local listings now are as big as the organic listings. Companies should be claiming their listings, providing categories, descriptions and so on. Local businesses need to get citations from Google and make sure that users are talking about their companies on social networks and through reviews.
Next week we will look at social mobilization.
2011 is going to be all about local and the continued development of geolocation technologies and the check-in services provided by companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla. A 2010 study conducted by Pew Research concluded that only 4 percent of online adults use a service or mobile app to share their locations with friends, but don't be fooled by those results.
Foursquare alone has more than four million registered users, Gowalla has more than two million and smaller services such as SCVNGR are on the cusp of the one million threshold. The overall adoption of location-based services is going mainstream in 2011, thanks largely to Facebook, and it's 600,000 users.
What was already a growing trend, received an epic boos when Facebook added a Deals feature to its location-based service, Facebook Places. Through Facebook Deals, retailers and merchants will offer discounts to users checking into Facebook from specific locations. Early partners have included the Gap, Starbucks and McDonalds. This is very significant for retailers and merchants along with those in the growing daily deals, local coupons space.
Google's interest in location has also been growing rapidly, most recently with a heavy focus on its local search listings. Businesses in 2011 must take advantage of the new emphasis on location by including their geographic data wherever possible and taking part in local deals promotions when they can.
The maps that show up in Google's local listings now are as big as the organic listings. Companies should be claiming their listings, providing categories, descriptions and so on. Local businesses need to get citations from Google and make sure that users are talking about their companies on social networks and through reviews.
Next week we will look at social mobilization.
