It’s that time of year again.  Time to compare last years predictions to what is now history; and look into the future for next years history…

• Well, Foursquare tripled its registered (as opposed to monthly active) users fro 5 million to 15 million.  If we give the same valuation that AOL gave to Bebo users and NewsCorp gave to MySpace users (US$24), that values FourSquare at US$360 million.  But it also assumes that each registered user represents US$8 per year in revenues.  The jury is out on that and it remains to be seen what the commercial value of checkin users really is.   Our bet?: US$100 million. In total.  Should have taken the Yahoo! money, guys.
• Simultaneously, the *other* checkin contender, Gowalla, stumbled, pivoted and ultimately floundered to be “acquihired” into Facebook’s Timeline (trademark?) team.  Supposedly the investors got 100% of nothing for that.  When the FB IPO goes to market, that will smart.
• Speaking of Facebook, their own geo-social checkin offering flirted with a commercial model in the guise of Groupon-like “deals”, but they pulled the plug pretty quickly on that, suggesting strongly that location is a feature and city deals is not a viable long-term business.
• This didn’t sway Groupon from IPOing (aka pumping and dumping) onto NASDAQ at a US$20 price.  No shock that after an initial flutter of bullishness, the stock beared down to US$15.  But a bit of a late year surprise as it gained back to the offering price.  Rumour on The Street is that the banks underwriting the pending FB offering are supporting heavily to keep the sector “hot”.

But what of our other prediction?  The rise of the Social TV app?  Well 2011 was definately the year of Social TV with a bevy of startups dreaming the dream: Miso, Philo, Hot Potato, Tellybug, Numote, SideReel, Tunerfish, ScreenTribe, yap.tv and, most notably, IntoNow, who were acquired by Yahoo! to complement their Connected TV offerings, for a quick US$20 million.

IntoNow set the tone for what second screen, social TV, companion apps should be about with “magical” automated content recognition (ACR).  The result being that…PREDICTION… 2012 will all be about ACR: digital fingerprinting, watermarking and content synchronisation.

But the established players are gunning down hard to protect their gatekeeper positions.  Expect a flurry of acquisitions from broadcasters and networks, purely as a defensive tactic more than an over-arching multi-screen, social television strategy.

ACR will also cause a significant disruption in the position of consumer electronics (TV, set top box, media center) manufacturers, who have been dropping the bag by purposefully crippling their “Smart” TV platforms to cow-tow to television content owners fears.

Watch this space as Google TV, Apple TV and the other Boxee-Roku’s get irrelevanced by second screen (tablet and smart phone) applications.

Roll on 2012.

Locle.

Find My Friends is an extension of the existing Find My iPhone feature which was included in the mobile Me service.

Find My Friends tips its hat to several established geosocial networking apps with venue checkins similar to FourSquare, Gowalla, Plyce and Facebook Places; time-limited sharing similar to Glympse; and background sharing similar to Google Latitude and of course Locle.

Interestingly, even though the Find My Friends app has OS privileges not available to third party apps, it doesn’t offer “killer” features such as Serendipity or use the bluetooth stack.

Since the Find My Friends service is only available on iOS, it will be interesting to see if it can gain the critical mass and network effects to take off as a social app; or if it will simply join the growing list of me too geosocial apps that have emerged in the past couple of years.

It is unlikely that Apple will provide an API for third party developers to release apps for non-iOS platforms.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/12/foursquare-and-facebook-try-to-force-serendipity/68324/

Mark Zuckerberg, in interview with Time magazine as 2010′s Person of the Year, stated: “We have this concept of serendipity…a lucky coincidence…you bump into a friend that you haven’t seen for a while.  That’s awesome.”

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/printout/0,29239,2036683_2037183_2037185,00.html

It’s nice to see the other guys beginning to get it.

He must have read the Irish Times coverage of the launch of Locle’s own Serendipity feature in June 2009!

http://www.locle.com/wordpress/2009/06/12/locle-launches-serendipity

We should have trademarked “Serendipity”!  The benefit of hindsight.  Alas, the limitations of boot-strapping.

Serendipity will be the killer application of mobile social networking.  You heard it here first.

Well 2010 certainly turned out to be the year for location based mobile apps. 

• FourSquare was offered $100 million by Yahoo! and turned it down. 
• Facebook launched Facebook Places, with all the checkin fever of a wallaby skipping to avoid outback traffic, but none of the fun of the mayor fair. 
• Location-based advertising took off at last, in the form of City Deals, Groupon and Living Social.

To counter all this fervor we predict for 2011 that

• FourSquare will regret not accepting Yahoo!’s offer.  Seriously guys, one hundred million!
• Facebook Places will get the gammy “gamification” it so rightly deserves.
• Groupon groupies will bore of spa discounts as the economy pulls out of recession.

But more seriously, we predict that 2011 will see the rise of a new type location based app, an app based around one and only one location: your television.

People spend more time in their homes than they do out-and-about.  The check-in to “Home” may earn you +1 FourSquare point, but it certainly doesn’t earn you social cred.  The social networker (that’s you) needs a way to get check-in fun when doing nothing and going nowhere.

Television is without a doubt the largest geo-located venue .  It’s in everyone`s living room.  And there’s lots to talk about “in” television.  Even though TV audiences can be seperated by large distances, television (live television) synchronizes viewers and brings them together into one venue-event called The Show.

Stay tuned this year as we take what we’ve learned from geo-social and expand into social television — our mission: to change the way that couch potatoes channel surf forever. 

Turn on, check in, drop out.  Again.

Happy New Year.

Yahoo! made the acquisition through their franchisee, Yahoo! Southeast Asia, after Koprol won a Yahoo! Developer Day in Jakarta.

Since May, Koprol has really taken off in Indonesia, now reporting over 1 million users, which puts it in #2 place against FourSquare’s reported 3 5 million users.

Koprol is now also the #3 social network in Indonesia after Twitter and Facebook:

http://www.koprolblog.com/2010/11/3rd/

At Locle we had already noticed that there was something special about Indonesia in relation to geo-social.  Without any advertising or promotion of Locle in the Indonesian market, and without any translation or localization, 15% of Locle’s users were from Indonesia.

We know that Indonesia is a big country.  With 240 million people, it’s the fifth most populous. 

So what is it about Indonesians?  We think it’s to do with mobile vs PC usage.  A significant proportion of the population only have mobile phone access to the internet.  But we also think it has something to do with the way Indonesians socialise.  As a predominantly Muslim, yet liberal country, geo-social networking seems to fit well with their way of life.

It’ll be interesting to see what other countries turn out to be surprise geo-socialisers!

The Irish Times ran a piece on the growth of location-based social networking (geosocial networking), covering Locle, FourSquare, Gowalla, Facebook, Google Latitude and Twitter.

…”Dublin-based Locle actually takes a different approach than the manual check-in: the app runs in the background and detects when you are near someone you know. “We built Locle as something that happens while you’re busy doing something else.”…

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/1029/1224282229992.html

The usual concerns about privacy are raised, but “you don’t have to turn the feature on”.

For Locle, Facebook Places cements the split in the location-based apps sector between game-play manual checkins (Facebook Places, FourSquare) on the one side and serendipity through automagical trackMe (Google Latitude, Locle) on the other.

Watch the clip here:

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/0819/9news_av.html?2805540,null,230

If the sales figures are good, we’ll do an update for the upcoming S40 phone.

Locle for Palm Pre and Palm Pixi is now available in the Palm App Catalog.  This version of Locle is developed on Palm’s new webOS platform, which makes use of web standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

The webOS version of Locle has been selected for pre-install on O2 Palm Pre phones in the Irish market.

Locle is now available on more mobile handsets and smart phones than any other geosocial networking app. Go to get.locle.com from any of these phones: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile, UIQ, Symbian for Nokia, Java ME for Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG and more, in addition to the mobile web version at m.locle.com.

 http://developer.palm.com/appredirect/?packageid=com.locle.locle&applicationid=2187

Thanks to everyone at MoMoDublin.

http://www.mobilepremierawards.com/blog/2010/01/18/mobile-premier-awards-in-innovation-nominees/

1. Steorn, the Dublin company that claims to have discovered a way to extract unlimted free energy from the Earth’s magnetic fields, actually launched their product publicly with a live demonstration on Dublin’s Grand Canal Basin.  Wild.
2. Google launched their own phone called Nexus One, named after the killer cyborgs who “call home” to their creator in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner.  Creepy.

This year we’re only going to make one prediction.  And it’s going to come true too:

• 2010 is the year that location-based mobile social networking takes off

Locle was ahead of the zeitgeist when we started the company in February 2008 (before the launch of iPhone apps!).  But the mood seems to have caught up with us. 

New services such as Google Latitude, FourSquare, BrighKite and Gowalla  are following early innovators such as Rummble, Belysio, Nulaz, Mobiluck and of course Locle to show the potential of location.

Om Malik from GigaOM Network wrote yesterday that “Today we “check in” to places, but soon it will become part of the platform, and when that happens we’ll shift focus to applications and services that build upon the concept of checking in”. 

At Locle, we enter 2010 well positioned with not only a location platform (as launched at GigaOM’s Mobilize 09 in San Francisco) but also a suite of web, wap, sms, iPhone and native mobile apps and services that are suited to almost any use.

The London Evening Standard wrote “…location-based social networking, where people use laptop or cell phone applications to tell each other where they are physically located at any particular moment. It’s an idea that’s been around for years but never quite managed to take off — until now.”

There are many reasons why “geosocial” networking is about to take off: mobile app usage, social networking activity, low-cost geopositioning, better smartphones.  But most important will be the irresistable delight of a little Serendipity in our every day.

We hope you will continue to follow us through the New Year.  Literally

Locle Mini for iPhone v3 is available for free download from the iTunes App Store here: 

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=305188273

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/1016/1224256785951.html

http://www.mercurynews.com/business-headlines/ci_13420463?nclick_check=1

Established in October 2007, the ITLG is an independent organization comprised of a number of high-level technology leaders in Silicon Valley who are Irish or Irish-American. The Group includes senior executives from some of the Valley’s leading corporations, each of whom are committed to helping Ireland address the challenges of embracing new technology opportunities.

“Silicon Valley” attendees can familiarise themselves in advance of the conference.  The Locle-branded implementation of the Locle Platform can be viewed at www.locle.com (desktop), m.locle.com (mobile web) and get.locle.com (mobile app download).

Developers intersted in creating their own location-based mobile social applications are invited to register their interest in the Locle Platform at developers.locle.com.

Locle Mini for Android “Google” phones, such as the HTC T-Mobile G1, is now available from the Android Market.

Locle Mini for Android is free to download and free to pass on to friends.

The mobile app is also available from Locle’s mobile download page at http://get.locle.com.

Locle Mini is now available on 10 mobile platforms: iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Nokia S60, Nokia S80, UIQ, Palm OS, Palm Pre, Java Mobile (J2me) SonyEricsson, Windows Mobile;  and also as a WAP 2.0 mobile website at http://m.locle.com and http://locle.mobi.

http://events.gigaom.com/mobilize/09/launchpad/

“…location-based mobile software and web services platform that offers a location API tailored to the needs of social applications.”

We’re scheduled to go on stage at 5:30pm Pacific Standard Time.

 http://www.sbpost.ie/technology/top-ideas-win-funding-opportunity-43714.html

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/08/03/locle-launches-location-api-for-other-apps/

Locle yesterday launched an upgrade to its location platform, presenting an API for web services which makes the entire web application available to 3rd parties through a set of standardised web interfaces.

Application developers that are planning to introduce location features to their own applications can now leverage the Locle system for their own benefit. It lets developers code their own front-end (be they desktop clients, web applications, mobile apps, gadgets/widgets, SMS or voice response services) to interact directly with the API.

As Sting sang: “If you love someone, set them free”.  And so it is with Locle’s location-based mobile social application platform.

This is very similar to how the Twitter platform is revealed through the Twitter API, except Locle has a revenue system built into the API, with location-based advertising, promotions and coupons, in-app micropayments and wallet.

The Locle API comes with full Twitter, Facebook and OpenSocial integration; canvas app and gadget libraries in PHP; and, soon, native mobile app libraries for Java Mobile (J2ME), Blackberry, Symbian S60 and S80 editions 1, 2, 3 and 5, Windows Mobile 5 and 6, Palm OS, Palm Pre, Android, iPhone/iPod Touch.

The upgrade included a reworking of the Locle mobile website at http://m.locle.com.

http://store.ovi.com/content/6C3961492C0D15B9E040050A87327928

The Ovi Store only supports Locle’s Symbian S60 3rd edition version at the moment.  However it is hoped that the store will expand its phone support to include versions of Locle designed for older Nokia operating handsets that use S60 1st and 2nd edition and S80 operating systems.

Locle is one of just 9 Irish companies to be shortlisted for a TechCrunch Europa Award. The awards are based on an open public vote and Locle is in the Best Mobile Application category.

You can place a vote on this web page:
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/the-europas-best-mobile-application-emea/

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2009/0612/1224248686492.html

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2009/0401/1224243795000.html

And compare our own:

http://www.dublincoastaldevelopment.com/irishtimes.com/breaking/2009/0401/breaking1.htm

http://www.herringevents.com/europe09/redherring100.html

The article also covered other Irish companies Mobanode (bluetooth proximity marketing) and Tagggit (mobile photo geo-tagging).

http://www.businessandleadership.com/news/article/12784/industry-reports/finding-your-way-online

Locle’s presentation is below. (8 minute video)

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12405/comms/locle-proves-success-in-iphone-app-store

Locle Top Paid Social Networking iPhone App

http://patphelan.net/why-mobile-coupons-will-be-huge-in-the-next-18-months

Locle looks to third-party networks such as Ocode and Yoose to supply the coupon campaigns, passing the campaign to the relevant audience and sharing the payout.

However, it’s companies like NearbyNow who are best positioned to deliver the scale needed.

You can download it from the iTunes App Store either from your PC/Mac or directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=305188273

http://url.ie/19cy 

Please take the time to give us a 5-star rating and write a positive review. These things make a difference.

We’re charging a humble €1.59 or $1.99 because, well, because we’d like to earn some money

But we’re giving away unlimited “share” licenses to iPhone users, so they can invite all their friends who don’t have iPhones to join with them in Locle. What a deal!

So, go on… download it now.

Previous Enterprise Award winners of include: Breakout Gaming Concepts (2008); Openplain (2007); Ripple Software Ltd (2006); Glantreo Ltd (2005); Sigmoid Technologies Ltd (2004) and Allergy Standards Ltd (2003).

John Kennedy from Silicon Republic / Irish Independent says Locle “has winning investment proposal”.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12384/business/mobile-social-mapping-player-has-winning-investment-proposal

http://irishdev.com/Home/News/322-Locle-Steams-in-the-Hothouse.html

http://www.techcentral.ie/article.aspx?id=13147 

http://www.rte.ie/business/2009/0302/%20locle%20.html

Best Investment Proposal

http://www.lemobile20.com/2009/schedule/selection-zapping-startup-le-mobile-20/

The 13 companies agreed to form an alliance to enable our users to share their location with friends on different networks. The alliance is named OSLO (Open Sharing of Location Objects) and attempts to create a standard for location-based social software to share user location information securely and with privacy.

Locle pushed to create this alliance to avoid a situation emerging similar to the Instant Messaging world, where users on different networks (MSN, Yahoo! Messenger, AOL IM, Gtalk) cannot chat to each other. Our hope is that OSLO will enable location-based social software companies to expand the overall market for location services and create a level playing-field as the 800 pound gorillas of the Internet enter the space.

Google Latitude, Yahoo! FireEagle and Vodafone are already looking at entering the OSLO Alliance.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/12343/comms/mobile-social-sites-begin-data-sharing-initiative

John Kennedy of Silicon Reporter and Irish Independent interviews Pieter about Google Latitude, the new “friend finder” add-on to Google Maps for Mobile.

“Latitude [not] a threat because it’s not that sociable.”

Google’s launch version of Latitude does not bring anything significantly new to the mobile friend-finder space, with well-established players such as Locle, Nulaz, Belysio, Rummble, Aka-Aki, BrightKite and Loopt (http://bdnooz.com/lbsn-location-based-social-networking-links/). 

Google seems to be forgetting their own message, that location is a commodity (thanks to their own geoLocation API).   A compelling mobile friend-finder application needs more than to show where friends are.

Google’s announced mobile platform support will cover about 30% of the mobile phones in the market today.  They have some catching up to do with Locle’s 70% market support.

Google Latitude is being released as YASN (yet another social network) with no support of external social networks and communities.

However, Googles established install base of Google Maps for Mobile will give everyone a run for their money.

But should Google be getting into the “buddy finder” software business.  Their mission is to sell more advertising.  They should be focused on providing the tools and technologies to established companies to drive more location-based, mobile and social traffic that can be monitized with Google’s AdWords machine.

http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/02/locate-your-friends-in-real-time-with.html

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/see-where-your-friends-are-with-google.html

“…Another viral mechanism that the web guys have been using recently is integrating with Facebook, mainly through developing a facebook application which can be promoted within the newsfeeds or through mass invites. Again, this isn’t something mobile services have made much use of – until now! Locle – a fantastic Irish mobile LBS startup has managed to integrate its service with the facebook mobile extension of the developer platform – allowing them to promote their mobile app and site through the social network. This is the first time I’ve seen anyone doing this on mobile and it’s potentially incredibly powerful.”

Locle is now available to download for free by O2 UK subscribers on the O2 Litmus app store.

O2 UK’s favourable prepay and bill pay data rates make Locle an attractive offering.    Locle’s cell-mast based positioning system combines with the O2 UK Location API to offer excellent geopositioning in UK metropolitan areas.

http://www.o2litmus.co.uk/applications/locle-v2_1

 Locle Mini, the downloadable mobile thin client for Locle, shows up in in GetJar’s “New and Recommended” top 10 mobile downloads.

GetJar is the world’s largest mobile application download portal with over 4 million downloads per week (Dec 08).

1. Apple releases the iPhone Nano, then the iPhone Shuffle (randomly calls any of your friends)
2. Solar powered mobile handset debuts with pocket ejection system
3. European Commissioner for Information Society develops nervous tick while drafting data roaming limits for EU mobile operators
4. Steorn admits perpetual motion machine was originally a publicity hoax, but investors happy it actually works
5. Nokia abandons handset manufacturing to focus on software services.  New Nokia mobile phone debuts on Windows Vista and Apple OS X
6. Google Android phone calls entire planet to find answer to stupid questions
7. Old man uses phone for purpose other than complaining
8. Couple celebrate marriage by text message

John Kennedy from Silicon Republic’s CIO column writes on trends in software and software development and puts Locle right up there with Ireland’s hot startups.

“The software world has shifted towards a new model of selling software as a service (SaaS), and a brave new world has opened up in terms of Web 2.0 technologies like social networking, as well as new markets for applications thanks to Apple’s iconic iPhone and Google Android. Web 2.0 software companies such as PutPlace, Cubic Telecom, Wubud, Locle and Muzu TV are relentlessly travelling the world and striking up alliances.”

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/article/11844/cio/ireland-2-0

Locle will be presenting at the European VC Summit in Dusseldorf, Germany, on Monday December 1st.  If you are attending and wish to meet one-to-one, please drop us an email.

Remember to download Locle Mini to see who else is at the event.

http://www.e-unlimited.com/events/p200245/selectedcie.asp

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Here’s a link to Sean’s blog posting about Locle:

http://blog.dial2do.com/2008/11/18/mobilemonday-dublin-november-08/

It was designed by Jet Design (www.jet.ie) and re-architected with Agile Technologies (www.agiletech.ie).

Just need to work out how to change the template on this WordPress blog to match.

Try Locle for Eircom from your PC at http://eircom.locle.com or from your mobile phone at http://m.locle.com

John Kennedy from Silicon Republic did a feature for the Independent newspaper:

http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/eircom-pursues-8216locle8217-approach-to-social-media-1499765.html

http://www.iia.ie/net-visionary/vote/19

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article4837446.ece

http://awards.ie/webawards/2008/09/long-list%e2%80%9cbest-new-web-applicationservice%e2%80%9d-category/

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/location-based-mobile-social-networking-generate/story.aspx?guid=%7BEB8AA8E4-0783-4F3C-BC2D-9CBF7B10FFE4%7D&dist=hppr 

“It reminds me slightly of the Irish Locle startup, a new mobile application that lets users see where their friends and family are without the need for GPS or mobile network operator location based services. However, Locle is much more social in that it integrates with social application platforms such as Facebook, Bebo and MySpace to bring social networking functionality to the phone. Locify is much more of a platform.”

We agree

http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/07/30/locify-makes-mobiles-location-aware/

“New services include … Locle.com, which will use Loki to show where your friends are on social networks.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jul/24/mobilephones.wifi

“Got a demo of Locle. Fantastic idea and it’s running. I know yeah, something that’s not vapourware! Nice one Pieter and Ronan.”

http://twitter.com/damienmulley/statuses/867003907