What I need from my favorite location-based application/s
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Some of you may have not decided if you want to start using location-based services yet or not. Perhaps you are wondering how will this service be useful to me? Or perhaps it is the privacy issue holding you back. Well, I'm not going to try to convince you today whether to use it or not, instead my focus is geared toward the people who already use it, and been using it for a while now. Don't you feel that these services are still lacking some features? In my case, I use Gowalla, but the same will apply to Foursquare: so you checked in a place, now what? In Gowalla, thank god, I still have the ability to pick up some cool badges, upload pictures, and comment on interesting places, but in Foursquare I can't - I can get to leave tips, which is pretty useful. BUT - I think both of the services are not half way there yet. I can think of so many ways to improve this check-in place experience so of course I have to share some of my thoughts:
Pictures: Thanks for the ability to upload pictures, Gowalla, but I also want the option to connect to image services that I'm already using. If it's Twitter, let me upload to Twitpic, Tweetphoto, etc. If it's Facebook, why not auto-open an album and upload all my pictures to there (I'm already connected to the service anyway), same goes to Flickr. It's not that you just let me check in and upload a picture at the same time, at least let the user have the ability to choose which service to use other than your own.
Badges: Gowalla has the awesomest badges, and Foursquare has some sort of a game going with not so great looking badges. Personally, I think that at some point it will become boring to become a mayor of a place or get a local badge so I'm hoping Foursquare will renew the game, but Gowalla... I really wish they made their game more powerful and interesting. The badges are great, and it's nice to have or swap them, but what about sending them as a gift to someone, or trading them in as real gifts at some point, or as coupons... (will get to that later). I just think that there could be better and interesting ways to give some liveliness to the lovely badges.
Nearby Friends: I really like the view on Google Latitude where you can see your friends' location on a big map. I think Gowalla (and probably Foursquare as well) are focusing on nearby spots and not handling the idea of connecting friends with others on a larger scale so well. There are so many ways in which I could have found time between meetings to enjoy with friends who were nearby (relatively) but I was unaware of their proximity...
Private messages: I guess the only good point of having private messages (aka DMs) instead of using email, is the ability of these applications to inform the user via notifications (if using iPhone) - which makes it easier to track a private conversation from within the application, which also means you don't have to expose your email address.
Recommended Places: I think both services do not handle recommendations very well - People should easily be able to add reviews, other people should be able to easily search for them. Foursquare is doing a better job with tips, but still, I'd like to get the best recommendations first, and not just random feedback. These things are usually measured by people voting and rating (would be nice to allow folks to do) - empower the users.
Coupons: I'd love to see some partnership with offline services such coffee shops, restaurants, stores, etc. If people offer recommendations on a place, and more people are going there because of these suggestions, it is more than likely that the place would want to give some kind of discount and collaborate with these kind of services. The problem is how to get to some of these services worldwide. But this is something that the users themselves can help do. For example, there is a coffee place in Tel Aviv that I usually go to and check in at. The owner of the place doesn't even know that I can bring more people in just by doing this. I'm sure that if I discussed this with him, and explained the service to him, I could (hypothetically speaking) get a deal like - everyone who checks in through Gowalla gets a special badge that maybe later can translate into a coupon or a discount - oh wait, a discount badge sound awesome :)
There is also a list of web and mobile services that I wish would be integrated into the Gowalla & Foursquare platforms, but that is a whole different post...
Some of you may have not decided if you want to start using location-based services yet or not. Perhaps you are wondering how will this service be useful to me? Or perhaps it is the privacy issue holding you back. Well, I'm not going to try to convince you today whether to use it or not, instead my focus is geared toward the people who already use it, and been using it for a while now. Don't you feel that these services are still lacking some features? In my case, I use Gowalla, but the same will apply to Foursquare: so you checked in a place, now what? In Gowalla, thank god, I still have the ability to pick up some cool badges, upload pictures, and comment on interesting places, but in Foursquare I can't - I can get to leave tips, which is pretty useful. BUT - I think both of the services are not half way there yet. I can think of so many ways to improve this check-in place experience so of course I have to share some of my thoughts:
Pictures: Thanks for the ability to upload pictures, Gowalla, but I also want the option to connect to image services that I'm already using. If it's Twitter, let me upload to Twitpic, Tweetphoto, etc. If it's Facebook, why not auto-open an album and upload all my pictures to there (I'm already connected to the service anyway), same goes to Flickr. It's not that you just let me check in and upload a picture at the same time, at least let the user have the ability to choose which service to use other than your own.
Badges: Gowalla has the awesomest badges, and Foursquare has some sort of a game going with not so great looking badges. Personally, I think that at some point it will become boring to become a mayor of a place or get a local badge so I'm hoping Foursquare will renew the game, but Gowalla... I really wish they made their game more powerful and interesting. The badges are great, and it's nice to have or swap them, but what about sending them as a gift to someone, or trading them in as real gifts at some point, or as coupons... (will get to that later). I just think that there could be better and interesting ways to give some liveliness to the lovely badges.
Nearby Friends: I really like the view on Google Latitude where you can see your friends' location on a big map. I think Gowalla (and probably Foursquare as well) are focusing on nearby spots and not handling the idea of connecting friends with others on a larger scale so well. There are so many ways in which I could have found time between meetings to enjoy with friends who were nearby (relatively) but I was unaware of their proximity...
Private messages: I guess the only good point of having private messages (aka DMs) instead of using email, is the ability of these applications to inform the user via notifications (if using iPhone) - which makes it easier to track a private conversation from within the application, which also means you don't have to expose your email address.
Recommended Places: I think both services do not handle recommendations very well - People should easily be able to add reviews, other people should be able to easily search for them. Foursquare is doing a better job with tips, but still, I'd like to get the best recommendations first, and not just random feedback. These things are usually measured by people voting and rating (would be nice to allow folks to do) - empower the users.
Coupons: I'd love to see some partnership with offline services such coffee shops, restaurants, stores, etc. If people offer recommendations on a place, and more people are going there because of these suggestions, it is more than likely that the place would want to give some kind of discount and collaborate with these kind of services. The problem is how to get to some of these services worldwide. But this is something that the users themselves can help do. For example, there is a coffee place in Tel Aviv that I usually go to and check in at. The owner of the place doesn't even know that I can bring more people in just by doing this. I'm sure that if I discussed this with him, and explained the service to him, I could (hypothetically speaking) get a deal like - everyone who checks in through Gowalla gets a special badge that maybe later can translate into a coupon or a discount - oh wait, a discount badge sound awesome :)
There is also a list of web and mobile services that I wish would be integrated into the Gowalla & Foursquare platforms, but that is a whole different post...
