The death of mobile “check-in” services is often hotly debated in industry circles; but while Facebook Places may have flopped and services like Foursquare/Gowalla et all look to expand their business models into something monetizable, other firms are already creating LBS value and making a profit.
The key ‘value add’ in LBS, it seems, is safety and, ironically, privacy – especially when it comes to keeping tabs on children or loved ones. Just look at AT&T’s FamilyMap, Sprint’s Family Locator and T-Mobile’s FamilyWhere for example.
The firm behind all three of these services, Silicon Valley based Location Labs, also powers the ‘no texting while driving’ offerings from Sprint and T-Mobile showing off how versatile LBS technology can actually be when they’re not restricted to becoming mayor of your local pub.
Indeed, the business model also becomes infinitely clearer once services are equated with actually important, useful, and sometimes life-saving technologies, as opposed to virtual social gloating rights or the occasional free cup of coffee.
Tasso Roumeliotis, founder and CEO of Location Labs told RCR that last year in the US there were more paid locations performed to locate children on Location Labs deployments than there where were freeFoursquare checkins. “Think about that – personal security around location will be a service that everyone will get,” he said, adding he wasn’t so sure everyone would want to earn digital badges for checkins.
“LBS is more than a game to millions of families who use location technologies to keep their kids safe, their families protected and their peace of mind intact,” he went on adding, “people and parents want safety. It’s primal.”
Location, Roumeliotis posited, is a proxy of being in a safe area. “Think of it as anti-virus for the human.” Parents, he said were starting to see value in setting up auto checks or alerts that tell them that their kids got to school ok at 8:30am or that a latchkey kid got home ok.
In fact, he claimed, 72% of mobile interactions between families ask, “where are you?” and Location Labs believes it has built up a very viable personal mobile security product for this exact use case scenario.
Another lucrative and useful service being rolled out by the firm is its ability to block texting while driving using LBS. 77% of teens apparently text while driving – increasing the chances of an accident by 23x, Roumeliotis told us.
“We use patented location technology on phones that determines whether a user is in motion in a car and can then block texting & calling,” he said, noting that both T-Mobile and now Sprint have already announced that this service would be pre-loaded on phones later this year.
Thus it becomes abundantly clear why a focus on family safety makes good business sense for Location Labs, because as Roumeliotis explained “people will pay for personal security.”
“You would be very suspicious if a home security system like ADT was free,” insisted Roumeliotis noting that people would rather buy a security service than depend on a free app.
Food for thought for the likes of Foursquare.
