Tag: geolocation technology

Location-based marketing gains steam in social networking

Location-based marketing is heating up and social networking sites are leading the charge. Foursquare is one of the first social networking sites to offer “check-in” services, which allow users to inform their friends of the locations they visit throughout the day. Facebook recently adopted a similar service and both networking sites have found a significant amount of success with these services in the advertising space. This success has garnered the attention of Rich Gorman, an online marketing specialist and veritable celebrity in the advertising industry.

Facebook and Foursquare rivalry could be good for location-based marketing

Gorman notes that Foursquare has made significant advancements to its check-in service that offers users with local search options. This assists in discovering locations that would have otherwise gone unnoticed by consumers, thus directing business to small stores that typically see little traffic. Facebook itself has been working to expand its services in order to compete with Foursquare, hoping to make an impact in  the location-based marketing space.

Mobile technology provides advertisers with direct line to consumers

Location-based marketing is becoming exceedingly important as consumers become more mobile. The advent of mobile devices has taken consumers away from stationary computing and out into the world, presenting a promising opportunity for marketers to engage consumers in a more dynamic way. Mobile devices, such as smart phones and tablets, allow marketers to be in constant contact with consumers and location-based services are providing marketers with valuable geographic information that could be used to target very specific demographics.

Mobile marketing expected to heat up in 2013

Gorman notes that there seems to be a growing rivalry between Facebook and Foursquare. Gorman suggests that Foursquare has a significant head start over its potential competitor, but Facebook has a great deal of clout that will enable it to match the capabilities of Foursquare. Location-based marketing may gain more momentum in 2013, especially as the rivalry between Foursquare and Facebook takes off.

Life360 has announced that it already has 25 million members and that is rapidly rising.

A geolocation app for smartphones called Life360 has been designed to allow families to be able to monitor the locations of their members, has announced that it predicts that it will have broken the 25 million registered user mark by the end of 2012.

This will mean that the company will become serious competition for the wider known Foursquare.

In fact, Foursqure, though it may be much higher profile, just passed the 25 million user mark in September 2012. That company is also based on a geolocation application. Both of those businesses first opened in 2008, but while Foursquare was able to raise more than $71 million, Life360 was only able to raise $6.85 million.

The Life360 chief exec is now predicting that its geolocation app will surpass the competition.

Chris Hulls, the chief executive of Life360 has announced that he believes that his geolocation app will have passed the audience size of Foursquare within the next couple of months. He has justified his prediction by saying that his company is experiencing a far higher growth rate than the competition. That said, he didn’t share any specific figures regarding the growth rates of either company.

Hulls also declined to reveal how many of his geolocation app’s registered members are actually regular users who are actively using the service. The most specific statement that he would provide was that it was a “pretty high ratio”.

In a phone conversation, Hulls explained that “We’ve really hit an inflection point in the company in terms of the family network going digital. We want to be the company that really owns your family life on the phone.”

The company used a new press release to announce this new membership milestone and, at the same time, launched a new brightly colored website branding style. Furthermore, it also announced that two new features would be added to its geolocation app. These are designed to help tech savvy parents to achieve greater piece of mind. They include “geofencing” through its Places feature, and map view crime data.