That’s why I was greatly disappointed to find that after all of the hoopla surrounding Disney’s new partnership with Gowalla, the “game” ended as soon as I entered the hour-and-a-half line for Toy Story Mania with my wife over the holiday weekend. Check-in. Get a badge. Game over. Nothing else to keep me entertained or, more importantly for Disney, experience their brand with my friends online. Before I dive into exactly what Disney could be doing to obtain a much better ROI while simultaneously enhancing the consumer experience, let’s first take a look at the state of location-based social networking.
Mashable stole the words right out of my mouth a few weeks ago when they said, “It’s painfully obvious that location is one of the fastest-growing segments of the tech industry.” At Direct Media Strategies, we are always looking to implement tomorrow’s technology today for our clients. We believe location based social networking (LBS) is a huge part of the future of online brand communication and we are doing a lot of work in this space (see our recent case study on our involvement in foursquare's Election Day "I Voted" badge).
Because it is still early in the location game, no one service has emerged as the undisputed winner. Foursquare, Gowalla and SCVNGR are certainly leading the pack by gaining the most users, high-profile partnerships and attention; and Facebook’s recent rollout of Places certainly has added a significant wrinkle to this whole game. And while foursquare is the front-runner in the race for users (excluding Facebook Places), the user gap between foursquare and it’s closest competitors is relatively small. The latest publicly reported numbers show foursquare at 4.5 million users, while SCVNGR is expected to reach 1 million next month and Gowalla is right at 600,000. At this point, it’s anyone’s game.
A recent report by Pew showing that only 7% of mobile-online adults in the U.S. are using these services has raised some legitimate questions regarding usership of these networks. However, I would argue that the reason why more people aren’t using these services is not because they are fundamentally opposed to sharing their location with their friends, they just haven’t found a game compelling enough to keep their attention and make sharing their location worth their while. After all, the reason these networks popped up in the first place was because millions of people were sharing where they were in their Facebook status updates. Services like Facebook Places, Foursquare, Gowalla, and SCVNGR simply geo-coded it and put those shared locations on a map.
If these networks are simply going to be about the check-in, they won’t survive. Facebook Places has filled that void. So what unique value proposition do these networks bring to users? Gowalla is frequently referred to as the “pretty” network for its commitment to beautifully designed badges. But are pretty badges enough to keep people playing? I don’t think so. Foursquare has had the right idea from day one in making their network competitive. Users go places, earn points, unlock rewards and compete for mayorships of locations. Foursquare is on the right track and that’s undoubtedly a big part of why they have been successful thus far. They understand that people love to compete and win. But the thing you hear time and time again from users and opinion leaders is that foursquare is passive. We have noticed with our clients that people check-in on foursquare as they are physically leaving the location. By nature, the foursquare check-in is not engaging, it is passive, making foursquare something you do not something you play.
That leaves us with Google-funded SCVNGR. At its core, SCVNGR is a game. Throughout everything they produce, SCVNGR is very careful in their choice of words, making it clear that their key differentiator in this market is true game-play. SCVNGR goes beyond the check-in, by allowing brands to create custom challenges that users can complete at locations to earn points and unlock real-world rewards. With SCVNGR, users experience brands, not just simply tell their friends where they are. In addition to these custom challenges and rewards, SCVNGR also has many of the same features as foursquare and Gowalla – badges, points, full Facebook and Twitter integration, etc. SCVNGR has got it all.
Going back to the Disney example above, allow me to show you how SCVNGR is different rather than simply tell you. When I checked-in to the Toy Story Mania ride on Gowalla this past weekend, I unlocked a custom Toy Story badge on Gowalla:
After taking that one simple action though, my experience was finished. The only action my Gowalla friends, Facebook friends or Twitter followers could have seen was my passive check-in letting them know I was at the ride. With SCVNGR, the next hour-and-a-half I spent waiting in line could have been filled with opportunities for me to have fun by playing a game, earn real-world rewards, and show all of my online friends all of the fun I was having at Disney.
On SCVNGR, you are greeted with a series of custom challenges at each location:
SCVNGR offers 4 different kinds of challenges: Photo Challenge, Specific Text Response, QR Code and Open Response. Here's an example of each:
Photo Challenge:
Specific Text Response:
The video integration is one of my favorite things about SCVNGR. By pressing play in the clue above, the following video would pop up in the user's phone allowing them to answer the question correctly and complete the challenge.
QR Code:
Open Response:
The one component not shown above is the Rewards component of SCVNGR, very similar to foursquare's Specials and Facebook's Deals. With SCVNGR, users unlock Rewards by accumulating points at a specific location. In the above example, once a user earns a certain number of points, they could be notified that they have unlocked $5 off their meal at Pizza Planet right next to the Toy Story Mania ride.
As you can see by the examples above, SCVNGR goes far beyond the check-in. SCVNGR is about experiencing brands and having users promote those brands in a fun way to their social-graphs. It's not just about telling your friends where you are or earning a virtual badge, it's about a fully customized experience with your favorite brand - something much more valuable to the user and the brand.
Disney, like other big brands, is making a gamble in the location-based space. Big brands like Coca-Cola, Conan O'Brien and the New England Patriots are making similar gambles. While custom foursquare and Gowalla badges are cool and pretty, they don't go nearly as far as SCVNGR can go for these big brands. With SCVNGR, Disney could take the most dreaded theme park experience (waiting in line) and transform it into an interactive experience for the user, earning them rewards, causing them to spend more money in the park and spreading more content to their social-graphs. As I stood in line for Toy Story Mania this weekend, I noticed countless adults and teens playing on their smart phones while in line. They were bored and they were looking for something - anything - to keep them entertained while they stared at the backs of people's heads. SCVNGR could have filled that void.
Don't hear me wrong - I am not saying that brands should choose not to play on other location-based platforms. Every brand should be doing the basics on each network (secure ownership of venues, setting up foursquare specials, creating tips, etc.) but as more and more brands look to invest money in this space, I am confident that SCVNGR will give brands both the greatest ROI and the greatest experience for users.
