It’s time to deploy more ‘interesting’ content

What is left that is ‘interesting’? Basic Navigation, getting you reliably from A to B and in a user-friendly manner, is still interesting - despite everyone trying to dismiss it using the c-word (commodity). There is still room for differentiation and innovation in how the consumer interacts with Navigation, and even how the routing is done for driving and walking. And there is ‘interesting’ Content out there.

Social Networks with Location
Generally, people prefer to interact with other people (1) whose location they know because that in itself is interesting and worth talking about, and (2) who are closer geographically to them and therefore ultimately more ‘meet-able’, if that’s a word. And I’m not just talking about ‘flirting / dating’ services.
An important aspect in social networking is that it should be inclusive and mass-market, and therefore based on Cell-ID. It’s selling the service short to link social networking to GPS and the painfully slow spread of GPS-enabled phones. The demographics may be wrong also – how many heavy users of social networking on Internet buy top-end GPS Smartphones?

Such a service must be cheap and cheerful. This is interesting content. It’s about your friends or your family. It’s about what they are doing now, and where, on your UI. It’s very ‘human’.

User-Generated Reviews
In geo-content terms a favourite of mine is www.tripadvisor.com, used for holidays and to see how good somewhere (resort, hotel, restaurant, place) is, based on aggregated views from similar people who have already done it. The ‘interesting’ questions are not about the opening hours, menus, entrance fee, and other dry and quantitative aspects. It is all about ‘how good’ or ‘how bad’, and would people recommend visiting or avoiding this place - qualitative data from real people like yourself. Properly aggregated, ordered, accessed and displayed real-time on a navigation or LBS system, such a service represents high value.

Monetization & Conclusion
For accessing geo-Content with a connected device there are always associated revenues from the data traffic. Advertising has been previously dismissed. Using high transaction charges to locate phones is shooting ourselves in the foot, and won’t encourage use. There may be other means, from low monthly subscription costs charged using SMS, to using such services as appetizers and binders to transfer on to more lucrative ones. The latest news on mobile social networking has Mobile Operators offering free or cheap access to social networking sites – they would unlock greater value by making Cell locations free, and really extending these services with location.

In summary I would urge caution on all this talk and hype around location-based advertising, local search, and Connected PND’s. Veterans of LBS have heard it all before, and for many years. In terms of getting this ‘interesting’ Content moving and monetized, the answer is not ‘Google’ either. Nor the next iPhone. This is just lazy thinking. It’s more about our navigation and mobile industries getting together and using a little more imagination, creativity and packaging to take today’s location services to the next level – with ‘interesting’ Content.


Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are the personal opinions of the author and are not necessarily those of GPS Business News.