Latitude vs Foursquare

Latitude Check In

A while back I wrote about using location-based social networking tools for business purposes.

In that post I cited Google Latitude as an example of Live Location Transmission (a tool that sends an approximate location of your phone to your friends) and Foursquare as an example of a check-in based tool (that requires users to manually inform the service that they have arrived at a particular location).

About a week ago, Google released a new Check-in feature for Latitude, which effectively turns Latitude into a hybrid of both kinds of services. I've spent about a week playing with Latitude check-ins, and I thought it might be useful to do a comparison between it and Foursquare. Probably the best way to do that is to highlight where the two services are different.

The most glaring difference between them is their catalogue of locations you can check into.

The Database

Add a new venue in Foursquare

When using Foursquare, if you want to check into a place, but you can't find the place you're sitting in the Foursquare system, you can create it yourself. It allows you to either enter the address manually, or pick up your coordinates from your smartphone's GPS, give it a name and then catagorise it (is in, it's a gym, or a restaurant, or an office building or what have you). Once you've added the place to Foursquare, other users can check into it too.

The advantage is that you're not limited by the existing contents of the database. The drawback is that it relies on humans to create the content... and humans make mistakes. You'll soon see that many places are mis-spelled, named incorrectly or in the wrong location. Only the person who originally created the place can change the listing, and if they don't know how to do that, then you sit with bad data in the system.

Latitude works differently, however. It draws its list of locations from the Google Places database. While Places is an enormous database, it's not complete, so you'll often find (especially in South Africa) that the place you're looking for isn't available.

While the data that's in the system tends to be well managed and curated for accuracy and that sort of thing, adding new places to the catalogue is kinda difficult. (In South Africa it seems impossible to add a place unless you're the owner of it)

Availability

Since Foursquare launched two years ago, they've made a constant effort to make their service available on as many different smartphone devices as possible. As it stands, I've yet to find a smartphone that isn't supported by Foursquare in some way or another. There's even a Chrome extension that lets you check in from your desktop. Foursquare also allows other application developers to connect to their service, so you can check in from other apps like TweetDeck.

Latitude check-ins, being a brand-new service, is still only available in one place: Google Maps for Android. I have little doubt that it'll be supported in future versions of the Google Maps for Mobile applications for other smartphones, and maybe even for the Latitude desktop view, but as of right now they're not yet available.

Syndication

A popular feature of Foursquare has been the ability to re-post your check-ins into your other social-networking sites. By default, it allows you to immediately post into Twitter and Facebook. If you've set up your syndication properly, you can send your posts from there into other services like LinkedIn or Google Buzz.

Latitude also allows you to send out your check-in alerts, but so far only allows you to send them to Google Buzz. This has its advantages, as you can configure Buzz to have your Latitude check-ins only appear in certain people's feeds, but the down side is that not everybody uses Buzz yet. If you want your check-ins to appear in Facebook or Twitter, you have to use some kind of third-party syndication app to make it work - which is a bit of a pain.

Unique Features

Latitude and Foursquare each have some features that have no analogue in the other. Let's look at a few of the most notable ones:

Foursquare:

• The gaming component: In addition to being a social networking tool, Foursquare also has a built-in game. Each time you check in you earn points, and you compete against everyone else in your city in a weekly contest. You also earn badges for your activity, and if you check into a given location more than anyone else, you become the "Mayor".
  
  With the exception of a few establishments who offer discounts and specials to their mayor, the gaming side of Foursquare is basically just for fun.
• Tips and To-Dos: When you check into a place, you have the option of leaving a tip. Something like "Try the bacon and salami pizza!" for example. When someone else sees your tip linked to a place, they can add it to their "ToDo" list, and a reminder will pop up when they check in reminding them to try the bacon and salami pizza
• Check-in History: Foursquare keeps a complete history of all your check-ins, and even allow you to export that history in a couple of different formats. My favourite is the way you can import it into your Google Calendar as an overlay - I've found it useful in reconstructing my movements for things like timesheets. (Latitude does keep a history of your movements and gives you some fun visualisations, but as far as I can tell your check-ins aren't included in that yet, and you can't export it to anything)

Latitude:

• Ratings: Latitude check-ins live in the same place in the Google Maps for Mobile application as Google Hotpot - a service for sharing ratings and reviews with the world at large, and your friends in particular.
• Automated Check-ins: If you frequently visit a particular place (your favourite coffee-shop, or your office building, for example) you can set Latitude to check you in automatically when you're in range on that place. This saves you the annoyance of having to thumb through the app checking in manually, and also saves you in case you forget to do it yourself.
  (I haven't tested this bit thoroughly yet, and I'm curious about how sensitive it is. For example, would it check you in if you're just driving past a place? I'll keep playing with it and let you know)

Wrap Up

All in all I'd say that Foursquare is probably still in the lead between the two - it's a more mature service with a more established user-base. However, if Google manage to solve the few problems with Latitude (and I predict they will), it will likely win out over Foursquare as the leading location-based social networking tool of 2011.

I've personally pretty much stopped using Foursquare now. I haven't removed the app from my phone yet though... I may change my mind again in the future.

Putting It Together

In the last few posts I've touched on some social networking tools and how they can be used to help your business, team or personal life, notably Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and Google Latitude.

Thing is, with each new tool you start to use, along with the added benefits comes an added overhead: each tool gives you a new place you have to go - another inbox you need to check. At some point all these social tools start to become overwhelming. What can we do about that?

Social Aggregation

Aggregation is a movement in new technologies that aims to solve this problem by pulling many different sources of information into as few screens as possible, and where possible, only one screen.

I've already talked about one particular social aggregator in past posts: TweetDeck. Although primarily a Twitter client, TweetDeck also allows you to interact, to a limited extent, with your Facebook, Google Buzz and Foursquare accounts. Of course to get the full range of features for any of those, you'll still need to go to the main website, but TweetDeck does a pretty good job of covering the day-to-day basics.



TweetDeck

 I've also mentioned an alternative to TweetDeck, Hootsuite, that does most of the same things, as well as allowing you to connect your LinkedIn account. Hootsuite has, unfortunately, recently started charging a subscription fee for some features that used to be free. But it may still be worth it, if those features are important to you.

But managing feeds and inboxes is only half of the problem. What about contacts?

Contact Aggregation

In each service you'll likely have a separate list of contacts (or "friends" or "followers" or whatever that particular service calls them). Although most of them will give you an opportunity to import your contacts from the other services manually, they generally don't provide you with a unified view of all of them.

If you know someone pretty well, odds are you're friends with them in Facebook, connected to them in LinkedIn, follow them on Twitter and Foursquare, share your stuff with them in Google Latitude and Buzz and chat to them in Google Talk. So that's one person with five different profiles spread all over the Internet (I said "five" not "seven" because most Google products, including Talk, Latitude and Buzz, use a shared contact list stored in your Gmail Contacts).

Wouldn't it make more sense if you could pool all those accounts together and have just one profile for that person?

Well, as it happens, there are some aggregation tools that let you do exactly that.

Inbox Side Panels

If you use Gmail and/or Microsoft Outlook, there are a couple of tools that you can use to achieve this: Rapportive for Gmail and Xobni for Outlook.



Rapportive

 Rapportive is a browser extension, which means you can download and install it as an "app" in your Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox Internet browser. When it's installed, you log into Gmail and open an email. On the right-hand-side of the email where the Google Ads used to be is now a small profile view of the person who sent you the email! Rapportive searches the Internet for matches on that person's name and email address and shows you a list of links to their various social networking profiles, as well as their last few tweets (if they're on Twitter).



Xobni

 Xobni is an Outlook add-on that works in a similar way. You download and install the add-on which will then launch every time you open Outlook. It sits on the right-hand side of your Outlook screen and reads the email address of the person who sent you the email you're looking at. It searches social networking sites, displaying their stuff there for you to see. You can also 'friend' or 'follow' them through those social tools from right there, if you want to.

In addition, Xobni searches your Outlook history and displays panels showing a list of who else that person knows, the last few email conversations you've both participated in, meetings you've both attended or have scheduled, and even the last few files you've sent back and forth as email attachments,

If you opt for the paid version of Xobni, it gives you even more cool features!

Gist

Gist dashboard view

If you'd like to take it to a level further than what Xobni and Rapportive have to offer, the big player in this arena is Gist. Gist calls itself a "social CRM" tool, because it really is more than just a social aggregator.

To set up your Gist account, you'll need to give it access to your other contact lists: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Gmail and so on. Gist then imports all those lists and keeps them updated. If you have a lot of contacts, it may take you a while to set it up properly: sorting through duplicate entries, differentiating between people and companies and that sort of thing.

Once you've got it worked out, Gist will give you a unified view of your contacts' activity across the different social media platforms, as well as communication histories, meetings, blog posts and news articles about them. Gist also uses an algorithm to calculate a "relevance" score for each person and company, figuring out how important they are to you, and thereby allowing you to filter the feed view based on how busy you are - if you're very busy, you can see only the most important people, if you're having a slow day you can see everyone.

Gist also has browser plug-ins and an Outlook add-in like Rapportive and Xobni, as well as mobile apps that let you monitor your dashboard on the go.

(There's even a trick you can use to get Gist to update your Google Contacts list, making that more relevant in and of itself).

Mobile

That's all fine and good if you're sitting at your computer, but what if you're on the run? You've arranged a meetup with a business acquaintance on Twitter, but you're running late, and she doesn't follow you on Google Latitude. Now you need to phone her and let her know, but you've never asked for her phone number and she's not logged into Google Talk. What do you do?

Most smartphones allow you to call someone directly from the Facebook or Gist app on the device (assuming  your friend has put their number on their profile). Android devices take it a step further though.

Linked contact on Android

The Android contact manager syncs not only with your Google and Microsoft Exchange accounts, but also with Facebook, Twitter and Skype, if you have those apps installed. It also has duplicate detection, and allows you to create an aggregated contact page out of all those different profiles, filling in information from all of them. So if your associate has their phone number in their Facebook profile, you've already got it in your Android contacts, with no intervention from you!

Invisible Computing

The ultimate goal of a user interface design is to make the computer effectively invisible - to make it so you need to do as little work as possible in order to get the information you need out of the system. Social aggregation tools are working towards that goal, and they're getting better at it every day.

Until the various social networking sites figure out how to update each other with their respective contact lists, at least we have these tools to help us do it for them.

ChromeDeck

ChromeDeck

In a previous post, I described two different Twitter clients: TweetDeck and HootSuite, the main difference between them being that while TweetDeck was a downloadable application for your computer, HootSuite was a web-based application ("webapp") that you could use inside your browser.

Well, there's been an update to that. In the last 24 hours, Google has announced the launch of the new Chrome Web Store - a website that allows you to install webapps for your Google Chrome web browser. Included in that launch is dozens (if not hundreds) of webapps to choose from, some compelling, others less so.

One of the new webapps available in the Chrome Web Store is a web-based version of TweetDeck, affectionately known as ChromeDeck.

ChromeDeck has more in common with the Android and iPhone versions of TweetDeck than with the desktop version, but it's a fully-featured TweetDeck application in its own right. And, like the others, it's free.

So if you're keen to check it out, go install Google Chrome, then head over to the Web Store to see what nifty things are available.

Another important thing to note is that ChromeDeck doesn't support all the same features as HootSuite. HootSuite has some really cool tools that allow you to collaborate with members of your team, all working on the same set of Twitter accounts. But if you're not using those sorts of things, ChromeDeck is a perfectly suitable alternative that syncs with your existing TweetDeck account.

What's This "Twitter" Thing?

If you live in South Africa, you've no doubt heard quite a bit about Twitter in news lately: between @pigspotter's feud with the JMPD and the ANC Youth League threatening to close it down because of Julius Malema impersonators.

You may even have been inspired to sign up for it to see what all the fuss is about... and then soon lost interest because you didn't see the point. If so, you're not alone.

Despite Twitter's growing popularity, it has a peculiar status in that is seems unable to explain decently what it is, what it does and what it should be used for. Even people who "tweet" constantly often have a hard time explaining exactly why they find it so compelling.

Given that so many others have failed, I'm going to give it a go anyway:

What Is Twitter?

Twitter describes itself as a "micro-blogging platform". While that's certainly true, it still doesn't give you much information.

Essentially Twitter is a kind of social networking tool, sort-of like Facebook, but a lot simpler. When you have a Twitter account, you're encouraged to post tweets - a short message of up to 140 characters long - which are then published to your Twitter profile page and sent out to anyone who "follows" you (sort of like a Facebook "friend"). You can follow other Twitter users, which means their tweets are shown in your feed. If you and another Twitter user follow each other, you can send private tweets to each other that don't appear on either of your profiles.

And that, in a nutshell, is Twitter. Sounds simple, right? But if you've looked at somebody's Twitter feed, you've probably seen a lot of things that look like this:

(by my friend @angelameadon)

That looks pretty confusing. What are all those funny letters and symbols?

If you've been using SMS for a while (since the days when it used to matter how long it was), you're probably familiar with that abbreviated SMS English that was originally developed by users in order to convey as much meaning as possible is as few characters as possible. Twitter users have developed a kind of short-hand for the exact same reason, but it's a little different because Twitter isn't just on your phone: it's on the Internet.

The part saying "#WikiLeaks" is called a "hashtag", which is kind of like a subject for an email. A tweet doesn't need a hashtag, but if you're tweeting about something that a lot of people are talking about, you might want to include one (or two, or three). That way when someone is looking for tweets about the WikiLeaks scandal, all they need to is search for "#WikiLeaks" and they can find all the tweets they need.

The bit that says "http://v.gd/Vmo1Ej" is actually a website address, even though it doesn't really look like one. Since the rise of Twitter and other similar services, a bunch of tools have appeared that allow you to turn a long web address (called a URL) into a short one - short enough to be included in a tweet. The one above actually redirects to the full address: http://213.251.145.96/mass-mirror.html. (My personal favourite URL shortener is http://goo.gl/ - but there are plenty of others to choose from).

There are other tricks and shortcuts you can learn too, but you don't actually need any of them to use Twitter. And once you get into it, you'll find you'll pick them up pretty quickly.

What Is Twitter For?

The nice thing about Twitter is that it's not really intended for any specific use... it's a platform. It's entirely up to you, the user, to decide what to do with it.

Some people I know only tweet about life-changing events, others use it to make business announcements. Some use it for sharing interesting things they find on the Internet, others use it to post every inane detail about their day. Some choose not to tweet at all, they only use it to follow other people. I use it for a combination of all these things, depending on the mood I'm in.

But more importantly, I use it to syndicate the content I create. Whenever I post a new entry on this blog it automatically sends out a tweet to my followers with the title and a shortened URL pointing to it. That way my readers don't need to check in here all the time, they can just wait for the next tweet.

Another nice thing about Twitter is that it's connected to everything. I originally started using it when I connected it to my Facebook profile... whenever I tweeted it would automatically copy into Facebook and update my status there. It was easier to update Twitter than Facebook directly. I don't use it for that anymore, but I do use it to post stuff into Google Buzz and LinkedIn.

Plenty of other services are set up to send stuff to your Twitter account, so when you do things on the other site, it automatically tweets about it. Supported services include Foursquare, YouTube, Blogger, Wordpress, MySpace, Posterous, Tungle and a bunch of others. Twitter can really become a kind of hub of your online life.

(Incidentally when you post your Foursquare checkins to Twitter, which then forwards them to Google Buzz, you can make your Foursquare posts appear on your Google Maps... which is pretty cool)

So It's Just Another Internet Toy?

Well it can be, but it can also be a serious tool. More and more companies are starting to use Twitter as a way of syndicating their web content and engaging with their customers.

For example, in the same way I have this blog hooked up to my Twitter account, you could hook your company's website up to a special Twitter account made for your company. Every time you post a news item to your company website, it would send out a tweet... then your staff and clients who follow your brand on Twitter would all have that post appear in their Twitter feeds.

Online news sources use that feature really well (like @News24 and @EWNUpdates), but other companies use it all the time too, like @NuMetro, @google and even @twitter themselves.

Customer engagement is a nifty way of using Twitter too. When a customer is upset about your company, odds are they'll go onto the Internet and complain about it... and Twitter is a place where that happens often. If you set up a search on your brand name, you can instantly spot when people are talking about you and respond to them then and there: in real time and in public.

A few months ago I had a frustrating customer experience with MTN... I wasn't getting any joy through the usual channels. (Full disclosure: I'm not only an MTN customer, but I've done some work for MTN as an outside consultant in the past) When I eventually tweeted about my frustration, I got an almost immediate response from @MTNSouthAfrica who worked quickly to help resolve my problem. I was sorted that same day.

How Do I Use Twitter?

Well the obvious place is to go straight to http://www.twitter.com/. From there you can do just about all the Twitter stuff you might need to do. You can also download official Twitter apps for your smartphone so you can tweet on the go.

If you feel a little limited by the standard Twitter stuff, there is a constellation of 3rd-party Twitter clients available. One important difference between the official Twitter apps and these 3rd-party ones is that usually the others will allow you to use more than one Twitter account, whereas the official ones don't. This may be useful if, for example, you manage your own personal Twitter account as well as one for your company's brand. With a decent 3rd-party client, you can manage them both from one screen.

Although there are many to choose from, my personal favourite is TweetDeck. TweetDeck comes with a version for your desktop/laptop (whether it's Windows, Mac or Linux), or a version for your smartphone (if you use iPhone or Android) that works in much the same way. Not only does TweetDeck allow you to have multiple Twitter accounts hooked in, but you can also connect your Facebook, Foursquare and Google Buzz accounts and use them all from the same application.



TweetDeck clients

 If you'd rather not install extra software on your computer, you can always use HootSuite - a tool similar to TweetDeck, but it runs inside your browser window. HootSuite also has matching smartphone apps with the same sort of functionality.

When it comes to connecting your Twitter account to your other accounts, that's usually pretty easy: when you're on a site you're hoping to connect, just look for a button saying "Connect to Twitter" or something similar... you'll usually need to login to your Twitter account to grant permission, then you're away and tweeting!

When you sign up to Twitter, don't forget to follow me, @owenswart, and be sure to let me know you're there so I can follow you back!

Where Are You?

Scooby Doo: Where Are You?

If your business includes mobile workers - sales-people, consultants, drivers or that sort of thing - odds are somebody, somewhere in your company probably has to ask that question several times a day: "Where are you?"

Here's a scenario: you and one of your mobile workers are headed to a meeting at a client's premises first thing in the morning. You get there on time, but your colleague hasn't arrived yet. The meeting is starting, but there's still no sign of him. What do you do? 

What most people would do is pick up the phone and ask "Where are you?" But think about that for a sec. Your colleague is likely well aware that he's late for the meeting. He's probably frantically dealing with traffic, trying to avoid getting traffic fines, and grasping to the only remaining thread of his last frayed nerve. Do you really want to add to his stress by making him answer his phone in traffic, distracting him, and possibly even causing an accident?

No, of course you don't. But you also need to know what's happening so you can deal with the client in his absence. 

Here's another scenario: You've been CC'd on an urgent email to one of your staff regarding a crisis at one of your clients' offices. You've seen her response to the mail indicating that she's on her way. This is an important client, and you'd like to know when she arrives so you can breathe a little easier. 

What most people would do is insist that she call you as soon as she gets there. But then you don't really want to break her stride... after all, she has important work to do there. Do you really need to disrupt her while she's busy placating a distraught client? But you need the info!

Fortunately there are some tools that can help us in these sorts of situations, and they don't require tapping into access control systems or installing GPS trackers in your employees' cars. They are what we call "Location-based Social Networking Tools".

You may recognise the term "social networking" as being the sort of thing that includes Facebook and Twitter. Location-based social networking tools fall into that category too, but as the name suggests, they're all about three things: location, location and location.

In broad terms, there are two different kinds of these tools: live location transmission and check-in based services. Let's take a look at an example of each.

Live Location Transmission Services

As the name suggests, this is a service that transmits the location of the person over the Internet, either in real-time or pretty close to it. The most popular of these services is Google Latitude.

Google Latitude

Latitude works through Google Maps for Mobile which runs on the user's smartphone. It uses a combination of GPS and network triangulation to figure out approximately where the phone is, and therefore where the person is. It then sends periodic updates back to the Latitude server over the Internet, which then forwards that information to the user's contact list.

If you and everyone on your team were using Latitude, you would be able, at a glance, to see where each of them are (or were as recently as a few minutes ago, depending on when the server last updated their position), laid out on a Google Map either on your own smartphone, or on the Latitude website.

This would be perfect for that first scenario: you're sitting in the client's meeting room waiting for your colleague. Wondering where he is, you whip out your smartphone and open Google Maps. You can now see that 11 minutes ago he was on or near the highway, roughly half-way between his home and the client's office. You can safely assume he probably won't be there for a while still, so you can suggest to the client that you start the meeting without him.

A new added feature of Latitude is real-time updates. If both you and he are using Android smartphones, you can set Latitude to give you minute-by-minute updates of his location for a short duration. This feature will probably be available on other smartphones in the near future too.

Check-in Based Services

These require a little more effort from the user than the other kind: when the user arrives at a place, she has to "check in", or inform the service that she's actually arrived. That information is then relayed via the service to her contacts. The biggest name in check-in based services is Foursquare.

Foursquare

Like Latitude, Foursquare is designed to run on smartphones. Although any mobile device with a web browser can use it. To check in, the user opens up the Foursquare app on their smartphone and waits for it to load a list of nearby venues (like Latitude, Foursquare knows where the phone is, more-or-less). The user then selects the relevant venue (the client's office, for example) and clicks the "check-in" button. Everyone on her contact list can now see that she's checked in there.

If you're one of her Foursquare friends, you can set your own Foursquare app to alert you when she checks in. Alternatively you can watch her Foursquare profile page on the Foursquare website, or you can plug your own Foursquare account into a Twitter client like TweetDeck or Hootsuite.

If you already use Facebook or Twitter, you can connect up your accounts and have your Foursquare check-ins transmitted to those other services too.

Things to Consider

As with most things, there are a few caveats here.

Privacy: some people aren't comfortable with the idea of their phone telling the Internet where they are. They find it creepy, and words like "Big Brother" come to mind. Before implementing a location-based tool as a policy, it's probably a good idea to discuss it with your team first. Also, look into the privacy policy of the tool in question so you can answer your team's questions. It might even be a good idea to try it yourself for a while with your friends and family so you can get a feel for it, and encourage your team to do the same.

As with most social networking tools, while they may have business applications, they are designed for personal use. Try to respect your team's privacy, and keep an open mind about what you see on their profiles. 

Precision and accuracy: Given that both of these services (and the vast majority of others like them, including Facebook Places and The Grid) are free of charge, you won't be able to get a 100% guarantee. Latitude is sometimes imprecise, showing a location that isn't actually where the user is, or having a large margin for error (indicated by a blue circle on your map). Foursquare, being a relatively small company, sometimes gets inundated and their service has to be taken offline for a couple of hours here or there.

If you're going to be using these tools, keep in mind that they shouldn't be used as anything more than a convenience. They're not (yet) reliable enough to use as evidence for things like KPIs.

Cost: Although these services are free to use, they both require transmission of data over the Internet, which can have a cost. If you aren't already, it would probably be a good idea to offer some kind of subsidy towards your team's cellphone bill to compensate for it.

I've used both of these services for personal and business reasons for quite some time, and I find them very useful. Another feature of both tools is that they keep a history you can refer back to later - particularly handy when filling in timesheets and that sort of thing. Even if you're not likely to use them for your team or mobile workers, I'd recommend checking them out for yourself, just for the fun of it!