Eric Leist » Future

#CMTSocial Highlights the Future of Location Based Services

Eric Leist — Sun, 08 May 2011 20:40:52 +0000

I had the pleasure of speaking at #CMTSocial last week alongside some of the brightest minds in social media and location-based technology. Here’s the panel I spoke on:

Link to UStream

Thanks to Ian Cross and Liz Sklar for inviting me to Bentley for this event.

Why the Checkin is Alive and Well

Eric Leist — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 02:30:03 +0000

Last week a controversial-for-the-sake-of-controversy article appeared on ReadWriteWeb. It was called 2011: The Year The Checkin Died. It stirred up a lot of conversation and has sparked a debate about the future of location-based services. Mark Watkins, the CEO of Goby and guest author on the article rips checkins as useless and uninteresting in many ways throughout the article. A lot of people have been asking for my response.

Here it is below in an audio except from the AboutFoursquare podcast:

Download: ABRANT.mp3

Of course several days after the article was posted, foursquare logged their largest checkin numbers in a single day to date with over 3 million. Several of those were mine.

My Top Five Reasons Why The Checkin Is Still Alive

Checkins are not about broadcasting. They’re about telling an app what you’re doing. Private checkins are growing because of the fact that use of the LBS services is evolving.
Checkins are useful for tracking behavior. Services like Scoville and foursquare points system enrich your life by helping you remember when the last time you saw your friends was and when the last time you went somewhere was. Post checkin experiences are like reminders of fun times and good memories. You can’t have those post checkin experiences without the checkins.
LBS deals DO influence decisions if they’re done correctly. You can’t blame the technology for the way people are abusing it. Eventually best practices will arise, just like other marketing channels.
Checkins DO aid discovery. They are data points that are valuable for recommendation engines, but they work in tandem with other data points. Without checkins, you have no verification, you rely on shaky self-reporting and aspirational data.
A service they relies sole on checkins will fail. Yes. It will. But there are not services that rely only on checkins. Checkins are always paired with other interesting data, and that’s what makes them so powerful.

What do you think? Are checkins dead? Are they useless? I think the definition of a checkin will change, and eventually the icky experience of having to go through five or six screens on a mobile device will give way to passive checkins.

The Future of LBS: Convenient, Valuable, Secure

Eric Leist — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 02:13:52 +0000

Last week, I was invited to speak at the Social Media Breakfast New Hampshire. The topic? Location-based services. You can watch the video below, but the short of the talk is that by becoming more convenient, valuable and secure, location-based services can move from being an unnatural behavior of the tech-savvy early adopters to a natural behavior of mainstream audiences.

Location-based Services in the Travel Industry

Eric Leist — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 06:40:12 +0000

On Thursday, we held our weekly Twitter #LBSchat and discussed opportunities for the tourism and travel industry. I’ve compiled some of the most interesting points of the conversation and added a bit of my own commentary here.

Question 1: How can Foursquare drive foot traffic to travel destinations?

As I mentioned here, it’s obvious Foursquare is moving toward a Whrrl-like model with it’s new 2.0 upgrade, which places To-Do’s and Tips in a much more prominent role. This change is the first of a two-step process:

Foursquare will take a main-stream tactic by spoon-feeding its users. First, Foursquare is introducing the core users to the idea of tips.
Second, Foursquare will implement more updates that will personalize and categorize the Foursquare user experience. Right now, tips are a dead end. If you leave a tip at a location on Foursquare and someone else completes your tip, you get no notification when happens. Whrrl has completed this loop with its influence scores and societies, but hasn’t yet penetrated past the iPhone platform.

Question 2: If you could only take one location-based app with you on vacation (domestic), which one would it be?

Dan Parks raised an interesting point here. Once Foursquare starts mining the To-Do and Tips data, they will be able to show which Foursquare users are more influential in certain verticals. The sushi expert’s tips will be displayed more prominently on location pages for sushi places. Same for wine connoisseurs, mommy-bloggers, urban socialites and more.

Question 3: How can an online travel sites like Orbitz and Expedia integrate LBS? What about drive revenue?

Alicia Collins raises an interesting issue here. When the reality she’s talking about comes to fruition, we will have real-world affiliate marketing. Right now, affiliate marketers get paid by how many clicks they get on certain links, or how many Amazon purchases are tied to their designated link. In a short while, affiliate marketers will be paid based on how much real-world action they are driving.

Question 4: Mobile application EpicMix lets skiiers track physical activity on the mountain. What’s more beneficial: specialty apps like EpicMix or LBS like Foursquare?

I have long been preaching the fact that location elements will become common features across almost all media, especially mobile media. In a few years, we won’t think about what location-based app we’re using. When we’re drinking beer, we’ll check into Untappd (and Foursquare along with it). When we’re running, we’ll use RunKeeper. You get the idea. Every app we use will have a location tie-in.

Question 5: How can LBS help travel marketers and content providers deliver audio and video content?

[Disclosure: One of my freelance clients was curious about the topic and asked me to include it in the chat.]

Maurice Rahmey’s point at the end is a good one. There are content creation companies already involved in LBS, or looking to get involved in LBS, but have no way of delivering their content on the LBS platforms! That’ll come soon, I think. SCVNGR will be one of the first. Stickybits is already dabbling in video and audio.

Discussion about Facebook Places

As per usual, #LBSchat skewed off onto a side discussion about what the hell that Facebook Places thing is supposed to be.

Question 6: Gowalla is partnering with Four Seasons to offer $100 gift certificates for users who complete local treks. Success or failure?

Here we have two opposing sides to the issue, and yet, I agree with both.

Want to join in #LBSchat? Head over to Tweetchat.com and plug in the #LBSchat hashtag on Thursday nights at 9pm EST. See you there!

“Mad Men” in the Twittersphere: The Future of Entertainment is Interactive

Eric Leist — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 21:31:43 +0000

I stumbled across an interesting sub-culture of the “Mad Men” phenomenon. Someone–actually, several someones–appear to be running Twitter accounts for all of the “Mad Men” characters. Yes, all of the characters. Even the vending machine has a Twitter account. The accounts interact with each other seamlessly, despite the fact that there are like ten Don Draper profiles.

A separate example:

My first thought is, “What the hell is going on here?” And then I see this:

So fans can interact with these characters (who I assume are being run by fellow fans) to create an interactive experience that goes beyond the 10p.m.-11p.m. time slot during which the show runs. Twitter gives these characters voices on an even playing field with fans.

This video by Ideo talks about the future of books. These folks believe that fiction literature will be interactive in much the same way as the “Mad Men” characters are living on Twitter. What’s the takeaway for entertainment marketers? Plan on making your content interactive in social spaces. If you don’t, your passionate fans will do it for you.

My question is do people always want to be active participants in everything? Is passive consumerism dead? Won’t there always be a small corner of humanity that just likes to curl up with a book and read? We’ll see.

Check out the rest of the “Mad Men” characters:

http://twitter.com/dondraperSCDP

http://twitter.com/Carla_Madmen

http://twitter.com/BethanyVanNuys

http://twitter.com/MisterDraper

http://twitter.com/HarryCraneSCDP

http://twitter.com/PeteCampbell_NY

http://twitter.com/_TrudyCampbell

http://twitter.com/The_Don_Draper

http://twitter.com/MsMeganSCDP

http://twitter.com/StanRizzo_SCDP

http://twitter.com/_BettyFrancis

…and I’m sure I’m missing a few.

#LBSchat Recap: The Platforms are Starting to Notice!

Eric Leist — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:39:47 +0000

@mrahmey and I have been organizing a weekly chat focused on the location-based services industry. It’s been a nice little Thursday night jaunt around topics like small business, gaming and location-features across the web. We never expected the location platforms to jump in on the discussion so quickly!

So far we’ve had Where and SCVNGR join the discussion, the TriOut team on board from day 1, and promotion from some really interesting Foursquare resources such as 4squarebadges.com, aboutfoursquare.com, @FoursquareHelp. Yesterday I spoke with Whrrl creator Pelago’s VP of Product/Marketing John Kim at length about the product’s roadmap and strategy after he noticed how much we were tweeting about Whrrl on #LBSchat!

This chat is quickly becoming a kind of focus group for the location industry. If you’re reading this and taking part in the chat, thank you! If you want to get involved, we chat on Twitter on Thursday nights at 9pm EST with the hashtag #LBSchat. Check out last night’s transcript.

#LBSchat Recap

Eric Leist — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:38:21 +0000

Last night we held our first ever #LBSchat. @mrahmey and I co-designed the idea over the past couple of weeks. Our goal is to open people up to new possibilities with location-based technology beyond the mundane discussions of Foursquare vs. Facebook Places. So last night we talked about how location applies to Groupon, Zynga, Starbucks, Chatroulette and Twitter. Here are some of the most insightful tweets from the night:

Cudos to the TriOut team for joining in. Having a platform perspective on these issues really enhanced the discussion. See the whole #LBSchat transcript here. If you’re interested in more location chatter, check out @waynesutton’s #GEOchat Tuesdays at 2pm EST.

Next Thursday at 9pm EST, we’re talking about gaming elements in location on #LBSchat. Don’t miss out!

How Facebook Can Solve The Duplicate Venue Problem

Eric Leist — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 02:06:22 +0000

I’ve been thoroughly confused by location-based services that allow the users to create venues. Many times, this practices leaves the LBS with a ton of duplicate venues. Facebook just announced they have partnered with Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp and Booyah to bring the location experience to the world’s largest social network. The Places feature on Facebook will allow businesses to claim their Place and merge it with an existing Facebook Page. Okay. Cool. But what happens when there are duplicate venues that already exists not just within a single platform, but across platforms? (Facebook answered a lot of questions in its FAQ section on Places, but this one remains unanswered.)

Here’s what Facebook has the potential to do. It can solve the duplicate venues problem once and for all.

At point A., if Facebook allows business owners and managers to merge multiple LBS locations with a single Facebook page, it can solve one of the biggest problems in the location industry. That would allow the location-based platforms to better track and merge duplicate venues.

But another issue occurs at point B. What happens if not every location has a Facebook Page? Do they have to make one? Some corporations don’t allow franchisees to manage individual Facebook Pages for their branch. What happens to those locations on Facebook? Is the corporate site allowed to merge multiple Facebook Places into a single Page?

To be honest, I’m a little overwhelmed by the Facebook press conference tonight. I may have missed the answers to these questions, but then again, Zuck did say, “There’s a lot we aren’t doing…yet.” The possibilities are there. Will Facebook and the LBS networks follow them up with actions? And if so, when?

#TweachOut

Eric Leist — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:50:00 +0000

I’ve been insanely busy blogging away on the Allen & Gerritsen blog as well as on TalentCulture, as usual. But I wanted to take a moment to tell you about an event I’m co-hosting with Alison Morris and Zach Cole. Check it out:

Here’s the Tweach Out challenge: Bring a friend who has never been to a Tweet-Up before. Show him/her what these events are all about!

WHO: Tweet-Up veterans and rookies

WHERE: The Lansdowne Pub – 9 Lansdowne St. Boston, MA 02215

WHEN: Tuesday August 31st at 7:00pm

FREE APPETIZERS and LIVE MUSIC

We will be using the hashtag #TweachOut to chronicle the event on Twitter.

Visit http://tweachout.eventbrite.com for details!

TEDxBU Talk on the Future of Careers

Eric Leist — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 01:39:37 +0000

Back in April, I took part in an awesome event called TEDxBU. It was an independently-organized event inspired by the movement of TED.

Here’s my talk on the future of careers:

In short, I see our work shifting toward

- more time spent managing technology

- flexible work environments and

- the continued rise of small businesses.

If you ever get a chance to attend a TEDx event, definitely go. This one was eye-opening, inspiring and a great way to refresh my mind. I learned a lot and will definitely be looking to attend more events like it in the future. Check out more TEDx Talks at their YouTube channel.