Even though Foursquare and its competitor Gowalla are only used by 4% of the online population, they have a bright future ahead of them. Here are some of the main reasons:
- People got used to use social media, and Foursquare and Gowalla remains social media, even thought they are geolocalized based.
- More and more people are adopting smartphones, and mobile Internet. The more people will have those kind of devices, the more they will use them for geolocalization.
- Businesses will start more and more to use those services to advertise, which will bring more interest, with discounts and vouchers.
It may sound not a lot 4%, but let's think about it: Did Geolocalization exist just a year ago?
Further, Pew reports that a two years after Twitter launched it only had 6% of the population using it. This suggests Foursquare (and Gowalla, to a lesser extent) are growing just as fast as Twitter did in its early going.
This is the reason why you should as a business or a marketing director pay attention to those services, because we are at the beginning of what is going to be huge. I also believe that for advertizing purposes, geolocalization may provide better results than Twitter, especially for retailers, which can generate traffic in stores, and have a clear return on investment out of their campaign.
Not that many company have tested Foursquare and Gowalla, but I believe all the ones I know have experienced success.
What do you think about it?
