Josh Williams, founder and CEO of Gowalla, surprised the audience during his keynote with quotes like “Badges are bullshit.” and “Gamification isn’t cool.”
What?
For three days we heard that gamification will solve every problem known to mankind: Education, Global Climate Change, ingrown toenails. And, suddenly gamification isn’t cool? Maybe it’s just not cool because Gowalla is losing the battle of location-based services to Foursquare and Facebook Places? Why was it cool when Gowalla signed a deal with Chipotle? And maybe badges are bullshit because Foursquare continues to bank highly on them and thrive?
We could ask these questions but there’s more behind the repositioning
When you’re losing to your competitor, you re-evaluate your mission and your vision. You have done everything in your power to beat them but, for some reason, they are leading in each and every category. And you start to realize that the initial reason for starting your company might have been forgotten while trying to catch-up with your competitors. You never meant to be like Foursquare (just like Yahoo never wanted to be like Google and the comparisons were always weak and meaningless) and you always tried to differentiate yourself by offering passports, connecting people with experiential places. But the public didn’t see this subtleties, they saw you as the LBS loser.
You have two options: Either dig in and continue the war until the bitter end. Or change the game.
Gowalla decided to change the game, transforming the service into a storytelling platform where people can document their memories by associating them with the places where they happened. No specific plans were revealed but it’s likely that Gowalla will add tools that will help people to add more content around specific places. The gamification part of the platform seems to be destined for the pile of buzzwords. And the pro-active part of check-in might change to a more passive activity.
A good move by Gowalla. The execution of their revised vision will determine if user will follow them on their new path.
Hurricane Party, Liquid Space, View, Localmind, Situationist – just some of the apps I’ve downloaded in the last few days at South by Southwest. I’m sure I missed out on tons more. And I’m glad I did. The appsphere has become unmanageable. I have around 100 on my iPhone, use maybe 5 of them regularly, 5 more on a weekly basis and a handful during special events. Foursquare is an interesting tool during events like SXSW, it helps me track people I want to connect with. Personally, I have no use for this tool when I’m back home. (I see benefits for the youth market but doubt we’ll ever see adoption throughout all segments.) The ‘dealification’ of location-based services as David Berkowitz calls it, might prove to be successful for Foursquare and Facebook Places (all others seem to fade rather quickly). But it will also transform its value from social to pure commercial. Hey, Valpak is still around and making money.
It makes sense for companies like Foursquare to cash-in as quickly as possible. When Mubarak’s regime an be swept away in 17 days, Foursquare can be forgotten with one tap of a new app. There a new apps that move location-based services into a more semantic and intention-based space. And there are apps that are more focused and useful when you’re in a certain mindset. The cold hard truth is: We have way too many apps. And it’s getting harder and harder to break through the clutter.
We need to aggregate functionalities
QR Code? I need an app. Picture sharing? App. Location? App. Intention? App. Conversation? App. Information Sharing? App.
Why? I want an app that integrates all these functionalities. How many photo sharing apps do I need? I want one app where there’s one camera button and I can choose between QR Reader, Photo (include Instagram while you’re at it), Video and, if possible, Google Goggles. Suck in my complete Social Graph and allow me to engage with them on my terms. Integrate readers (RSS/Instagram). And let me customize it. In short: help to delete 20 apps by aggregating all their functionalities. Cleaning the apps wasteland will help me clean my screen, clear my mind and give me back some time to look for real innovation.
The time of incremental innovation is over. You either aggregate or innovate. Or I delete.
I met Jyri Engestrom at the Monaco Media Forum late 2010. He was in the early development stages of Ditto and we talked about the idea of VRM, and how location-based services have to move into that space to become really useful.
The growing armada of location-based services just let me share where I currently am. I always questioned the value for user and advertisers. Why would I be interested to receive a $1 off coupon from the bar across the street when I just plopped down on my chair, ordered a drink and checked in?
Ditto goes beyond the check-in: It shares your intent to do something. Much more interesting for the user (commercially but also socially) and definitely for advertisers. If I know what you’re intending to do, I can provide you with extremely relevant offers. The application won’t be limited to food and drinks, Engestrom envisions expanding its offering to anything that’s discoverable: books, music, movies, etc.
I find this application very useful and much more valuable than any of the other location-based service apps have to offer at this point. (Sorry, no badges.) We’ll see if it will take off during SXSW.
Former Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, now at Kleiner Perkins, just published her newest slideshow about the rise of mobile computing.
A few observations:
Slide 19: 60% of time spend on smartphones is new activity for mobile users. That’s an amazing stat. Just think about how hard it is to change behavior. Not in the mobile world: Apps, Social Networking and games make people change their daily behavior. Think Foursquare. Think Yelp. The question is: How long is that window of opportunity open? When will it close?
Slide 22+: Mobile Advertising -growing pains but huge promise. It’s a short-term promise. Once advertisers flood the market with mobile ads, users will be turned off and tune out very quickly. We need to focus on utility, not advertising.
Slide 35/36: Mobile Shopping changing behavior. Once again, we need to focus on this changing behavior. How we can add more utility to this behavior, make it more valuable? NOT disrupt it with ads.
Slide 42: “Gamification of apps is the ultimate way to engage a new generation of audiences.” YUP!
Slide 50: Google, AOL, eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon are shaking in their boots. Pretty convincing slide documenting the wealth creation, destruction cycle
Slide 54: Pretty poignant on this day, watching the events in Cairo: “Empowerment – impact of empowering billions of people around the world with real-time connected devices has just begun.”
It was Second Life at one point. Foursquare. The newest object is Quora. 2011 will deliver more bright, shiny objects. And many of us will lament the marketers attraction to them.
Marketers love bright, shiny objects because it’s easy. It’s hard to come up with a landing page that stands out. It’s hard to develop a Facebook strategy that is more signal than noise. It’s hard to develop an innovative SEM strategy. You’re fighting for the attention with thousands and thousands of other brands and people trying to do the same. And it’s harder to succeed with proven marketing tactics.
Bright, shiny objects are much more forgiving. It’s easier to stand out, it’s easier to get recognition in the marketing echo chamber and nobody faults you when you fail. (Just ask all the agencies that developed Second Life islands.)
Nothing against trying new things, exploring new tactics. But it should be based on solid insights and ROI. Not because it was easy.
