Tag: geolocation app

Geolocation app may be in Facebook’s near future

| February 6, 2013

Facebook geolocation appThe latest mobile marketing efforts from the social networking giant could include location tracking.

Sources with knowledge in the areas have revealed that Facebook currently has a team developing a smartphone geolocation app that will track user locations in order to help to boost the effectiveness and relevance of the social media experience on those devices.

The app is currently believed to be slated for a mid-March release for more than a billion users.

According to the sources – who have opted to remain unnamed as the company has yet to release the details of this geolocation project to the public – the main purpose of the app is to allow its users to be able to find friends who are nearby. Regardless of whether or not the app is actually open on the handset, it will still collect data for this and other purposes that are relevant to the application.

This geolocation app is only one of many features that Facebook is continually adding to its mobile experience.

The company may also be using the geolocation data that it receives through the app to be able to enhance the profitability of its mobile marketing efforts – which it has announced will be a primary goal for 2013. This would allow it to gain access to a tremendous amount of user location information, as there are currently over one billion people who use their mobile devices to access their Facebook accounts.

The geolocation information that will be gathered will present a considerable mobile marketing opportunity for the social network, as it will be able to sell ads based on the daily habits and the whereabouts of the app users. This could prove to be highly appealing to many companies who are seeking just this sort of opportunity to take advantage of the high tech benefits that m-commerce has to offer.

At the same time, many consumers and privacy advocates have already been raising concerns about the way that the company manages the personal data that it collects and this may only incense them further. They are not alone in their doubts of the social network’s management and protection of sensitive data, as it has also received the scrutiny of European and American regulators.

Facebook is not alone in this type of geolocation initiative, as both Google Inc. and Apple Inc. have already both created and implemented their own versions of location tracking.

Geolocation application experiences massive user growth

| December 26, 2012

Geolocation growthLife360 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.