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Location-based services are a business, but the consumer holding the mobile isn't who you should expect to pay. Instead, get off your lazy programmer ass and s
by calambrac 18y ago
Location-based services are a business, but the consumer holding the mobile isn't who you should expect to pay. Instead, get off your lazy programmer ass and start pounding the pavement, getting local businesses to sign up and pay for access to your awesome location-aware ad network, and then give the consumers the amazing value of being able to ask not just "Where can I go to grab coffee?", but "What restaurant has open seats right now?", "Who's offering discounts to get rid of their pastries instead of tossing them at the end of the day?", "I need to buy a box of Cheerios, any local grocery stores want to bid on my business?", etc.
Location-based is the future of business. I wonder if this guy sees it and is trying to drive away the competition, or if he took his one flawed pass at a business model and gave up. Either way, he's full of shit.
- lhorie 18y ago>> Location-based is the future of business. I wonder if this guy sees it and is trying to drive away the competition, or if he took his one flawed pass at a business model and gave up. Either way, he's full of shit. Are you doing this successfully? If not, I'll take the word of someone who's been there over the word of someone predicting the future.
- calambrac 18y agoHe's been there with a model that failed. He talks in great length about why that model sucks, and then draws the conclusion that the whole space is doomed. Why is that more convincing?
- lhorie 18y agoI'm not saying I'm convinced either way. I have an idea of what it takes to pull together a location based service with a business model similar to the yellow pages (in my case, I'm referring to a local service in my city which is not as big as the Yellow Pages, but is still a 30+ people operation). If he has valid arguments about why his model doesn't work, I can combine that info with what I already know about the amount of effort, time and money needed to reach the critical mass needed for the yellow-pages-like model. Then I can come to my own conclusions.
- calambrac 18y agoI have no problems with what he said about his model. I have a problem with the larger conclusion that he draws, that the whole space is poison as a result.
- lhorie 18y agoI thought the conclusion was this: >> As a LBS start-up, you need to think about adding distinctive value for users which, afaik, is true of any type of business (especially start-ups). In that aspect, I definitely agree with the author.
- calambrac 18y agoYou're exactly right, but that's my point. I mean, isn't it always obvious that you need to be adding value? If you're not, how are you in business at all? And yet, he's saying this as if it's a great admission of defeat, that location is dead as a business because you actually need to do something with location information, not just provide it, and the only things he's thought to do that could possibly make money are sex and security. But he's wrong. "Who's nearby?" is still very valuable, just not to the guy holding the handset. It's valuable to the businesses who want those people to walk in their door and buy something. The thing that he talks about being commoditized is your friends locations, the social graphs that we define. But I'm not going to add grocery stores and such to my personal network, so the how are businesses going to know I'm nearby and want to spend money? Well, what if I implicitly gave the companies around me permission to know I'm nearby by pulling them up in search, mediated by my location? The company that sets this up using realtime local search is going to be able to make a lot of money, because businesses are going to pay to know who's around and what they're looking for, and to be able to pitch to them directly (think, as a consumer, how great it would be to have access to a reverse auction from the six stores within walking distance anytime you wanted to go grocery shopping. Then think, as a business, how great it would be to be able to broadcast any price advantages you had over your competition in real time to the people who wanted to buy what you were selling).
- 18y ago
- volida 18y agoFrom what you say it's obvious you didn't read the article or you didn't care to understand it. Others, why are you upvoting him?
- calambrac 18y agoWhat are you talking about? He keeps complaining that "Where are my friends?" won't make money, and ignores the questions "Where are my customers?" and "What can I spend money on near me?" What, exactly, am I misunderstanding? Generally, instead of complaining about how people are voting, it's more productive to say why you disagree. It's not like I just spit out a pointless troll, I addressed the substance of the article and said why I disagreed. If that rubs you the wrong way, or you think I missed something, say why or actually take the time to enunciate what I got wrong. Otherwise, please stfu.