Forrester Research says location-based start-ups are still too small for major marketers. The research firm finds location-aware apps currently make sense mainly for brands seeking male influencers. Forrester says only 4% of U.S. online adults have ever used location-based mobile apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt. Only 1% update these services more than once per week.
According to AdAge, the report could be a wake-up call for social media on mobile phones. About 84% of respondents said they are not familiar with such apps, leaving the vast majority of Americans online still in the dark about location-based apps.
Almost 80% of location-based service users are male. Close to 70% of them are between the ages of 19 and 35, and 70% have college degrees or higher. Forrester also found these location-app users to be influential and are especially receptive to mobile coupons and offers.
Forrester recommends that gaming, consumer electronics and sportswear marketers lead the way with testing these apps. Location apps have already proved they’re not only for male-oriented brands. PepsiCo, Starbucks, Oil of Olay, Bravo and, most recently, Campbell’s Soup have all launched campaigns with location apps.
Twitter reports 35% of its 125 million registered users are in the U.S. and only a fraction of that number accesses Twitter via mobile. In April, Twitter said 37% of its usage comes via mobile clients. Apply that percentage to U.S. tweeters and the 16 million Americans using Twitter via mobile is about comparable to the location-apps audience in total, says Ad Age.
To date, Foursquare has more than 2 million users; Loopt 4 million and MyTown 2.5 million. Scale could come to the category if Facebook, Google and Twitter develop their own products.
Foursquare is being pursued by Yahoo!, which has offered as much as $125 million for the service, says Venture Beat. Foursquare raised $20 million in June 2010 from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Google latest Maps for Android features a new Places application that makes it easy for the user to search for points of interest in their immediate vicinity.
In other location-based news, “real-time” use of geographic data is the theme for this year’s annual GeoWeb conference, being held all this week in Vancouver. Stephen Piotrowicz, program manager for the NOAA’s Global Ocean Observing System, will describe the project which involves 3,500 information-gathering buoys programmed to sink 610 metres and collect data on temperatures, salinity, density, relaying this information in real time.
Google Earth data sets have been made available by several of the GOOS programs. Most of these are presented as “KML” or “KMZ” files. Argo data can be accessed from NOAA Global Argo Data Repository.
