As the vacations are happily over in northern hemisphere and our previous blog concerned vacation planning and social media we now want to share our experiences of using social media or better said geosocial networking while traveling on vacations.  – What is geosocial networking again? It embodies the major characteristics of mobile, social and location-based applications something like a combination of Twitter, Facebook and a GPS capable smart phone. The users are sharing real-time short messages on the spot and the businesses in turn can deploy an information channel that incorporates applications with reward programs that can be monitored. These services pursue the objective of bringing the web and the physical world together in a funny, entertaining, and commercial way. This results in returning clients and loyal client bases among many other benefits.

There are a few dozens of geosocial applications out there but let’s have a look at some interesting players. No, we are not actively engaged in all these services but we believe they in many cases should form a part of companies’ social media architecture.  The review is based on company websites, our experiences as proud supermayor badgeholders, and some industry reports.

1. Gowalla

“Keep up with your friends, share the places you go, and discover the extraordinary in the world around you”.

Gowalla embodies a city guide, friends locator and a treasure hunt game. The users check in and alert their friends or other people nearby. Users then collect digital pins and stamps as incentives and share photos, experiences and hints with others. Pins will also be awarded for completing routes which means checking in at several interconnected locations. Gowalla works in a high number of locations worldwide and it has millions of users. It is very advanced what it comes to commercial and more sophisticated applications. It recently ran promotions on in Applestores and newly announced a co-operation with Facebook places, Nike+ and EpicMix where users can view the location of friends in Vail Resorts.

2.  foursquare

“We’ll help you meet up with your friends and let you earn points and unlock badges for discovering new places, doing new things and meeting new people”.

foursquare claims to have a 3 Million+ user base and it is meanwhile the best known geosocial application. The users check in at various types of places, unlock cool badges such as gym rat, jetsetter, photogenic and many more and can become mayors of frequent visited venues. Naturally, the users share the location, tips, ideas etc with their foursquare network.
The amount of stores and locations using foursquare is probably the highest of any geosocial apps and the company states that it is growing at 500-1000 new business inquiry pace a day. Foursquare is also the most common in business use and it has campaigns with Starbucks, Whole Foods, GAP, and Sephora among others. It also announced a co-operation with American Express introducing the concept of social currency.

3. Facebook places

“Share where you are and connect with friends nearby”.

Facebook introduced its fanciest app, the Places in August in the US and launched the service the later in September in the UK. Although Facebook is a follower in the rivalry of the location-based applications it can easily challenge the other companies by leveraging its 500m users and engage them with the brands even more accurately. We do not yet have user experiences from Facebook places.

4. Loopt

“Find out what happens around, connect and share”.

Loopt was first developed for Sprint Mobile Customers in 2006 and thus, is probably among the first geotagging services ever. It consists of 4 applications; Loopt star: go places, find friends, get stuff – Loopt: find who is around, what to do, where to go – Loopt pulse for iPad: what is happening around you – Loopt mix: chat with people around you.
Loopt shows real-time locations of friends and events and it also incorporates restaurant recommendations, later thanks to Yelp plus some other applications. It offers advanced privacy controls so that sharing occurs only among selected audience which is an important feature.

5. Booyah MyTown

” Explore your city and discover real-world MyTown deals near you; Unlock real-world discounts and offers at your favorite shops”.

MyTown is Booyah’s mobile game that was first introduced for iPhone only. This one is different from others since it involves purchasing and selling of places with virtual money and then collecting income when other users check in. It tracks users’ locations but displays it all in game format thus is very entertaining.  It has recently been enriched and it now incorporates even a bar-code scanner to support product campaigns for big brands such as H&M and Pantene. It claims to have more than 3 million users

6. Scvngr

”a game all about going places, doing challenges and earning points”.

By doing that it connects virtual and physical worlds as the other applications. They run currently a campaign with AT&T where the players can get $50 off a Samsung cell phone. Scvgr also works via sms but our guess is that it is only half as informative and entertaining that way.

7. Stickybits

“a fun and social way to attach digital content to real world objects”.

This is a very cool new application that allows users scan barcodes that are attached to music, videos, photos, text, products, and many more. We see many useful alternatives to apply the Stickybits capabilities:  for instance a cv or a company brochure can be attached to a business card by adding a bar code on it. The barcode reader application needs to be installed on users’ smartphone but it is easy. Stickybits works with brands such as Pepsi and Campbell.

8. Barcode Hero

“Now it’s fun and easy to compare prices, share recommendations with friends, and discover cool products. Never shop alone again”.

Scan barcodes, compare prices, share recommendations, unlock awards is the success formula of Barcode Hero for social shopping. Become king of shiraz or queen of cameras and tell it to everyone in your network.

9. Shopkick

“Rewards simply for walking into stores”.

This involves easy check-in and product scanning processes to collect kickbucks meaning coupons and discounts which can then be redeemed for various types of rewards. Shopkick has campaigns with Macy’s, BestBuy, American Eagle Outfitters, and Sports Authority among others.

10. Foodspotting

“ lets you find dishes, not just restaurants, thanks to foodspotters who report sightings of foods they love”.

This one differs from the previous ones since it is clearly restaurant targeting displaying delicious meals placed on map bridging physical restaurants all over the world to digital environment. The interface is very well realized, and the application proves how geotagging can increase consumer experience.

How to benefit from geosocial networking?

For users, the geosocial services are helpful since they offer a real-time, on-the-spot –based system to discover new places, give feedback and share it with the network which then knows it comes from reliable sources.  It is the transparency and the opportunity to influence that makes social networks so attractive and addictive that some people make it even to supermayors. Obviously the game format applications emphasize the latter characteristics.

For businesses the services have opened an opportunity to know in real-time who the clients are where they are located, and engage with them when they are in the neighborhood and likely to spend. Some apps enable product level accuracy of customer behavior which we consider unique and very amazing. The benefit of the huge variety of application is that each business can select the apps that are aligned with other objectives. Important to remember is that the apps come with basic statistics that helps the work at the back office. . And yes, the ROI can be calculated; McDonald’s announced recently that its Foursquare campaign which cost them $1000, resulted in 33% increase in store visits.

Geosocial networking: Conclusions

The geosocial applications have made it possible to connect the offline stores with digital world and it seems that only creativity is the limit. They truly enhance the client shopping experience, enrich the promotion tools portfolio, increase the amount of information, and improve the transparency. Although the major campaigns have been for big brands the geosocial apps offer an affordable way for mom-and-pop stores to create a simple CRM system to communicate with loyal clients. Therefore, there is a good reason to say that location based mobile social media should be a component of any social media architecture.

Any problems or concerns? Yes, roaming is expensive for tourists so free wifis should be provided. Some apps seem to require a lot of bandwidth and the systems are down fairly often. Privacy – users should think twice with whom to share information since check-ins mean that they are not at home. Meanwhile the applications offer decent level of privacy control.

Finally, by applying solid consideration and common sense the users can benefit from geosocial apps since they are entertaining, informative and useful and make many even simple daily tasks easier. Just go and select the most appropriate ones. The businesses should  which ones fit the best to their social media strategy.