Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Location Based Platforms

To be 100% honest I know very little when it comes to location based platforms.  I have used FourSquare in the past, but quickly forgot to ever "check in", so I deleted it from my phone.  I have only checked in on Facebook one maybe two times.  So it is easy to say that I am an amateur, at best, when it come to this topic. 
I wasn't really sure where to start when I was researching about this topic, or what I should really talk about, so I did a quick search online and found this article Why Location Based Services Like FourSquare Are Going To Become Big Businesses.  It taught me a lot about the reasons why businesses use services like FourSquare, and why people check in to theses services.  I never realized that there was so much going on when it came to platforms like this.  It is really cool to me that people are able to earn rewards from companies by checking in to FourSquare.  The article described it as a "loyalty rewards program", this description helped me understand the whole concept much better.  I'll be honest, I thought this checking in thing was a little goofy at first, I didn't really care where people were and what they were eating for lunch.  I also didn't really care for anyone to know where I was and what I was eating for lunch.  My thinking was, the people who already knew where I was, were the people who needed to know.  But my opinion has most definitely changed about this concept, I am much more interested in this system now that I have learned more about it.  My ignorance was definitely affecting my opinion on these location based services. 
After reading Top 5 Location-Based Services I am very interested in checking out all of these services to find out which one I like most.  I am excited to utilize these platforms, and receive the benefits of taking that extra second to check in. 

2 comments:

  1. I didn’t know anything about anything before class yesterday either. I don’t understand the real use of FourSquare still from the consumer’s end but from a business stand point, free advertising from actual customers who check in while browsing is just good business savvy.

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  2. I'm in the same boat--I didn't know a thing about these services. It's interesting to think that they've been around so long but haven't been all that popular. I think that with the growing amount of sales on mobile devices we are going to see the popularity of these platforms rise.

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