Written on 12th February 2009
6 COMMENTS 
Ken Camp, Contributing Opinion Writer, USA
This post is designed to bring a slightly different perspective to Ten Reasons why Google Latitude will succeed from last week. That post touches on some great reasons why Google will succeed with this latest hot entry into Location Based Services (LBS).
If you haven’t looked at it yet, Latitude isn’t really anything specific you have to download or install. Think of it as social networking among your Google friends coupled with Google Maps. It’s simply part of the latest version of Google Maps, and supported on a number of platforms. Here’s a screenshot from my Blackberry.
Latitude Raises the Bar
The idea of location based services isn’t something new by any means. Mobile phones have always had the triangulation potential of cellular service as one means of identifying location. Today’s devices couple that with WiFi access points and a variety of flavors of network-assisted GPS technologies to provide fantastic location possibilities.
In the recent past, Brightkite has provided one of the most popular location based services, but with the painfully cumbersome twist that users must manually look up their location and check in. There’s no automation to location detection. Even the most aggressive early adopters quickly tire of the process. With Latitude, Google fired a serious shot across the bow for players like Brightkite.
What Latitude delivers is realtime convergence of what old-timers might call cyberspace and meatspace. I can’t count the number of times I’ve said that my social network is also my business and personal network. And my social network is my Blackberry. It’s the primary tool for communications and engagement with all my contacts. Beyond that, it’s the entire Internet in my shirt pocket. Here’s the most simplistic map view of Sheryl and I in proximity.
On the map of our town, we’re near each other. For a couple or business partners, it’s a great way to see how close your partner is for lunch or dinner. But when we think in broader terms, we quickly discover that social networking means something entirely new with this sort of information.
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Written on 5th February 2009
48 COMMENTS
David Petherick, Contributing Editor, United Kingdom
As we announced yesterday, Google has released Latitude, its extension to Google Maps which allows you to share your location with your friends.
Here are ten reasons why I think it will succeed…
1. It’s Google.
They are big, they are a verb, they are well known and well trusted. Although the mobile apps space seems crowded, the fact that an 800lb Gorilla just entered the room will make it change – and it’ll probably squash a few people, push a few out, sit on a few, and maybe eat some.
It has already ’scaled’. And ladies and gentlemen, it has just entered your building…
2. It’s Viral.
As I walked to where a local fishmonger parks his van each week, yesterday morning, I was able to invite several friends to join my network just using one hand on my phone. Some had responded by the time I was walking back home with my fish. By the time it was being cooked, I’d invited over 50 people to share – and some messaged me to say thanks.
By the evening, several friends had done the same, and invited me to connect with them on Latitude.
3. Everything is local.
Yesterday, I could see where Boris was in Amsterdam, Sheryl in Washington, Anton near Galway, Bryan in New York, Will 2 miles across town in Edinburgh. But what is important to me is always local – wherever I am – and especially if I am in a new place. I want to know how to reach that meeting, where to get wifi or coffee, what’s a nice spot for a 2-hour lunch meeting, and when I’m on the road, the mobile phone is my lifeline.
Over 90% of people keep their mobile phone within a few metres of them 24 hours a day.
4. It’s Desktop and Mobile.
In my browser’s iGoogle page, Latitude automatically appeared top left yesterday after I’d downloaded latitude to my phone. Nice touch. And so I can respond to friends wanting to share their location with me, see their status, and update my status (which updates in Gtalk, and also, optionally, Twitter and Friendfeed). The desktop is where I can comfortably access information that is more verbose, more structured.
The mobile is where my search needs and attention span are different – Latitude serves both, and as a user, I can get valuable input from sharing both types of data.
5: I am the most important person in the world. You come second.
Everyone has an ego. We like to have attention from others. So it’s natural to want to say “here I am”. Latitude panders to that simple human need perfectly. When there’s a big conference like The Next Web, it’d be great for finding new friends and pinpointing old ones. And for switching it off sometimes, too, or appearing to be at a meeting when I’m actually playing in the park with my child. When I am thinking about sharing ‘locations’, I feel it’s nice to add things to maps like a good restaurant I know in Barcelona, or the cheapest place to park near our office in Edinburgh.
This is information I already share with friends, but now, I can put that information into play once, and leave it there for my friends – and they might update me if that restaurant closes, or they find a great bookshop – and share that with their friends.
6. Everyone understands Maps.
And if not, everyone understands satellite images. And so everyone can relate to the information on a map. Columbus went on instinct, but he started with maps. I love to be able to see other cities and countries, whether I have been there, am going there, happen to meet someone from there, or if it’s just in the news or comes up in conversation. Maps satisfy my curiosity easily, and they are a starting point for asking for other types of information. Who what when where why how how much? Wow, if live updates and location status was around when I was 19, I’d probably still be recovering from all the great parties and great stories I covered for the student newspaper, and still be amazed at how small the world was, because I had discovered so many mutual friends.
I can now see how Jim Haynes‘ legendary Paris Sunday Night Dinners can scale. Jim, we’ll see you soon – really, or virtually!
7. Uncomplicated sharing.
Hre’s the message you get when someone wants to share Latitude with you.
Subject: John Brown wants to share their location with you on Google Latitude
Message: John Brown (mail@gmail.com) wants to share their location with you on Google Latitude. You can use Latitude on your mobile phone, PC, or both. To accept or reject the request, or to learn more about Latitude, click the link below.
http://m.google.com/latitude
(And a map showing where John is)
Simple, brief, to the point. No hype, no lengthy explanation, no hard sell about how useful this is. Brevity and clarity. I don’t mind sending or receiving that sort of message.
8. That’s not Latitude. That’s just an upgrade…
I used my non-GPS enabled phone (better for texting), and then a GPS enabled one (nice camera and great for doing interviews) – both simply upgraded existing software. It’s not Google Latitude I installed, it’s just the latest version of Google Maps. 3.0.0. I remember when Windows reached version 3.0 was when that product really started to get useful. And part of the reason it will succeed is that Google doesn’t complicate or burden this by calling it mobile social networking, or ‘location-aware interactive group software’.
Nah. It calls it “Latitude”. Like Docs, Maps, Earth, Mail, Images, News, Shopping, Checkout, Friend Connect, Maps. Simple. Functional. Google.
9. They still don’t get it. But they will.
In the Financial Times this morning (and you may have to register to read that ;-), the focus in their story about Latitude is privacy. The headline? ‘Google to track mobile users‘. Big brother anxiety is what has stopped ‘mobile social networking’ success. Well sorry, privacy is dead, in the same way that newspapers are dying – and for similar reasons. For those who fail to understand why Stephen Fry should have gained a following of over 100,000 on Twitter, here is the news. Personal publicity and personal engagement lets you talk, lets you share ideas, makes you friends, and lets you influence people. Always been that way, just now the tools are different – radically so – it’s people power – always scary for the status quo.
And when things that one, younger generation ‘gets‘ and embraces readily as a vehicle for change and liberation, but another can’t understand, resist, and insist is dangerous, there’s only ever one endgame – because the old folks die, and the cycle is endless.
So Latitude is part of an Attitude. Dude.
10. And What’s next?
It’s a stable release, and it works. iPhone application is yet to come, but it works in any web browser. But what might be next is obviously including messaging. And I can imagine the APIs might allow dating applications, being alerted to free wifi as you pass a cafe or pub, checking what films are on nearby – all of which the advertisers might be persuaded to pay for – Mobile AdSense, in effect. Overlaying your own data onto maps, sharing that with others, and being able to choose what to filter in or out, or subscribe to a network’s data or recommendations or reviews all have revenue possibilities. Not to mention that the data carriers will love this extra data traffic as their revenue from call charges declines. Android-based phones like the T-Mobile G1 may become suddenly much more desirable.
It’s a building block in a semantic web – it’s part of The Next Web.
Google, you did it again. What would we do without you?
Written on 5th July 2008
1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
One thing I used to love about living in New York, was my favorite coffee bar: The Lotus on Clinton and Stanton. In the weekends, I grabbed my Macbook, sat down for a good ol’ cup of American coffee, and started browsing away. Sometimes I started a talk with one of the other visitors – as New Yorkers are always eager for a chat about life. I miss that in Holland, where most people tend to be more closed and busy with themselves. But now it looks like an app from Norway-based software agency Ground Control might help me to get back into that New York vibe. Moot connects you to people who are using the same Wifi spot as you. Isn’t that cool?
When I attended one of my classes at New York University in 2006, Scott Heiferman, CEO and co-founder of MeetUp, gave a guest lecture. He told us that online services should be all about helping people. The goal of his start-up was to connect people in real life by using the web. Well, that obviously worked. Moot has the same purpose, so what will happen with this service?
A local Pownce
So Moot sort of works like a local Pownce: it’s all about sharing media. After creating an account, you can select the music, video, and images you’d like to share. Short note here, you can only share stuff for which you have the copyright. People who are on the same wireless network can browse through these files and download whatever they want. If they like what they see/ hear, they can express their appreciation by giving you “respect”. There’s the solid basis for a good chat. Instead of walking up to random people, you’ll will now know whether you like someone’s weird/ good/ tremendous taste. How’s that for randomly meeting interesting people?
Where’s the Mac app?
Unfortunately, Moot now only works on Windows platforms (also the mobile ones by the way). They’ll have to launch a Mac app as soon as possible, since they’ll desperately need the early adopters. Moot is only fun when a lot of people use it, and there are some barriers for people who aren’t used to services like Twitter. Most early adopters own Macs – visit a tech conference if you don’t believe me — thus the guys from Ground Labs have some work to do.
As soon as they’ve got that figured out, I’ll hang up some flyers in my coffee bar – so I’ll never miss an interesting person anymore.
By the way, the design of the Moot site is uber trendy, don’t forget to watch the magnificent intro movie – and no, I’m not exaggerating here.
Written on 29th January 2008
0 COMMENTS
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
We often hear about mobile social networking companies launching. A few examples are Zingku (Bought by Google), Loopt, Berlin based Aki Aki, Helio, Moco Space, Denmark based Zyb, Bluepulse and Frengo but I’m sure there are countless others. You can imagine that I was skeptical when I heard about the soon to launch Ozmota. They are based in Barcelona, Spain with R&D in Australia and a focus on Europe and Asia.
Ozmota’s slogan ‘Anything in life gets better when you share it’ surely doesn’t count for money, girlfriends and underwear. The main difference between Ozmota and their competitors is that they have a clear B2B model and will focus on Telco’s such as AT&T, Sprint, Verizon instead of the end user. The site clearly reflects this with ManagementSpeak such as “Ozmota’s carrier grade platform, SMACC™ (editors note: not to be confused with ’smack’; slang for heroin) integrates social network services, ad and search capability, published and user generated content all seamlessly linked into our geo spatial database”. I’m sure Telcos love it.
“Ozmota’s slogan ‘Anything in life gets better when you share it’ surely doesn’t count for money, girlfriends and underwear”
Now it is easy to make fun of a website of a company that hasn’t even launched officially but in all honesty I do think they have stumbled on a huge opportunity. Their competitors are all spending their energy in attracting end-users which means they don’t have to make all those difficult deals with Telcos. Ozmoto is taking a top down approach. The founders of Ozmota, Matthew Kapp and Simon Button, appear to have good connections to the telecom industry and see to understand that all the Telcos are scratching their head right now looking for a way to monetize their users by offering them more social services. They can simply wait for Facebook or some of the companies listed here to steal all their members or come up with their own social service. This will be what Ozmota will be able to deliver.
Ozmota is currently looking for funding and will be at 3GSM in Barcelona which will take place 11 till 14 February 2008.
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