Waze And Means

Tired of getting stuck in traffic?

Join the crowd, the crowd that is contributing to Waze, "a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road. 100% powered by users".

According to their promotional literature, "The more you drive, the better it gets".




I tried it for Singapore and got a live traffic report for Rome scrolling on the left hand side.  However these are teething challenges as the platform has not yet been widely adopted in the country.

The GPS powered Waze map provides plenty of advertising opportunities.  It is an excellent social service; to be more precise it is a driver generated service for drivers.

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Four Square And Ten

Foursquare is something of a phenomenon in the States.  It is based on the idea of getting people to sign up, explore their own neighbourhoods and then reward them for their efforts.

Activity is recorded in real time on the Four Square site. The explanatory video is below and the beauty of the the idea is that marries the increasing use of mobile devices to customer loyalty.

Businesses are encouraged to produce 'specials'. These range from special deals for the 'Mayor', your single most loyal customer, to check in, frequency and what they term 'wild card specials'. Point of sale decals are provided for download.




So does this work?  A survey conducted in May amongst 127 non-chain businesses in the USA suggests that most businesses didn't get to learn about Four Square from customers; they heard about it from friends and colleagues.

Source: MattSiltala, DreamSystemsMedia

The crunch is that only 10% of those surveyed would be prepared to pay for the Four Square service which makes it doubtful that the site's business model is sustainable?

Certainly as this chart demonstrates the sites reach is growing rapidly.

Screen shot example - Singapore

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