location, location, location, bla, bla ,bla
It's officially out of hand. The next time I hear someone ask, "What's hot right now?" and someone says, "location awareness", I'm literally going to puke. Then I'm going to log into FourSquare, create a new venue called "Brad's Puke", and check in there. Then, I'll go back tomorrow and check in again so I can become the mayor of my own vomit.
You see, FourSquare is cool because it is a game. Well, it's cool to users because it's a game. And because it makes it harder for your friends to ditch you when you're on a bar crawl. It's cool to venue owners and advertisers for a whole different reason - super-laser-targeted ads and offers. Perhaps the coolest thing about it is that all of the users are unwittingly building a sort of living Yellow Pages. I'm certain that my obsession with FourSquare is wearing off, but I'm also convinced that it will remain, at the very least, a useful social tool to help me figure out where people are, or where they were last night. But here's my point - even FourSquare doesn't need to be location aware. There are so many 'nearby' venues presented that I end up using the search function nearly every time I check in anyway. Location awareness is simply a little tool that speeds up the act of checking in. sometimes.
So, my reading of the news of BlockChalk's $1million in funding came with partial regurgitation of my big salad from http://foursquare.com/venue/235825 (aka, Yogi's Grill & Bar). BlockChalk makes an iPhone app that lets you leave notes around your neighborhood. Really? There's an app for that? I can leave messages, to-do's, tips, etc. on FourSquare and I can actually drop virtual items on Gowalla, so what's unique about BlockChalk? The supposed secret sauce is that you can leave notes in any virtually fenced-in area. It doesn't have to be a venue. Woo hoo! There's no competition or rewards, but now you can leave notes anywhere - a block, an alley, a dumpster, a rock, anything.
Location awareness is not a sector, a vertical, a space, or a market. It's not even a product. It's a teeny tiny enabling feature that is probably optional on most useful apps. I'm all for investing in useful apps that use location awareness to improve their user experience, but location awareness by itself is nothing. Location plus notes is still nothing. It's not a game. It's not terribly useful for advertising. The only value I can see here is that it may create a sort of user-generated history book about a location. More likely, it will read like the walls of a bathroom stall. Perhaps I can create a virtual fence around my puke, and leave a note for those who pass by years later saying, "Ha! You just stepped where Brad Wisler puked in 2010."
