OurTraction

While it is still early, 2010 is definitely shaping up to be the year of the mobile device.

There are a number of applications that allow you to share your location with your friends. Gowalla, Foursquare are two that have made this into a game, allowing users to collect points and “dropped items“.

Metro’s recent announcement that they have partnered with Foursquare has taken these applications from permissible non creepy stalking to useful tools.

Metro newspaper is a free daily that is handed out at transit stations in major Canadian cities. They have also been active participants in new media, with numerous Twitter accounts and casually written blogs. They claim a circulation of over 800,000.

When a user checks into a location near a site that Metro has a reviewed, a Foursquare tip will be displayed on their phone with the option to read a full review.

There are other applications like AroundMe or CanPages that use you GPS location to return search results related to your location. However Foursquare has the benefit over these application of being crowd sourced and therefore updated more frequently.

While this announcement only speaks about reviews, there is also the potential for breaking news to be shared in the same way, a featuring lacking in other proximity applications.

While augmented reality could arguably be considered more interesting, there is still a barrier of entry (for example the need to install applications to your device). Foursquare and similar services are web based and are easy to use, therefore encouraging more users.

What Is Your Business Doing?

Social media gives businesses of all types the ability connect with their customers. And potential clients are asking to be connected with you. So what are you doing to converse with them? The tools are available and just waiting to be used in news and interesting ways.

Titus

Titus currently wears the “newbie” hat at rtraction and in his new role he helps keep our clients fluent in many dialects of social media. Titus has been a key organizer for a variety of local technology events. A true conversationalist both online and off, Titus rarely shies away from a healthy debate and is motivated to see the Internet become more social and move towards more engaging conversations. Titus is also an avid cook and would rather eat a failed recipe then throw out food. As a student, in order to save a few bucks, he would often brew his own beer.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 at 4:41 pm and is filed under OurTraction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.