Yobongo **
Chat with people nearby is actually their slogan from this San Francisco based company.  Caleb Elston and David Kasper, both formerly of Justin.TV, took a big leap in leaving their day jobs to get this off the ground, and from everything in the press so far they have a huge winner.  Currently only available on iOS, even celebrities are popping up on the service.

Yobongo works by firing up virtual chat rooms based on heuristics, not just GPS.  They take into account the actual person involved, known connections and some other algorithms.  Working the application itself is simplicity.  By just opening the application you are put into a room to start typing away.  You can always move a conversation to private, or join in the public fun once inside.

Another key feature is the founders’ statement about verifying accounts, similar to what Facebook does now, to partrol at the best of their ability for real photos and names.  The idea is not be anonymous chat services, but provide a service grouping people together on topics/interests coupled with location.

SXSW and other events will benefit if rooms can be driven around topics or even sessions.  If we both have the same session interest, then I would want to see who you are.  Having an existing connections to someone already (picture via the Facebook authentication that is offered), that is seen to help in your room grouping. This would be a great addition to events like the Oscars for stars and backstage access people to have direct contact and then be able to walk away when they need.

I certainly understand the positive press results Yobongo has seen so far after playing with it for a short time.

HeyTell

Humorously, when I went to review this app on Android first, it was the very first featured application in the Android Marketplace.  A good sign for them that it is getting downloads and attention right now.

HeyTell, from Voxilate,  comes from a husband and wife team that are taking the old days of walkie talkie’s to the mobile front.  They already have over 3 million registered users (I read that as app downloads too).  The application is available for free on iOS and Android devices.  The monetization comes from add-on purchases and advertising.

The premise is that you broadcast a voice message via the app.  It then is available to anyone in a range based on their privacy settings HeyTell has established.  You can receive from anyone, friends of friends and lastly just friends.

Setting up the profile was simple.  Select yourself from your address book, or enter your display name.  Phone number and email address are optional.  The rest of the controls are on notification and privacy.

Once that is established, you enter the main screen which lets you immediately send to a person in your address book, blast one out loud or listen.  If you click the map icon, a pop-up notifies you that “whenever the map is displayed, the person you are talking to can see your position whenever you send a message.  If you do not want to disclose your position, avoid sending when the map is displayed“.  Clicking the map icon again made it slide off the screen.

I can see this being very popular at conferences (SXSW comes to mind), sporting events and even concerts.  Reaching out with your own voice allows a more personal approach to the application.  Unless you use a voice modifier that seems to be an option via purchase at some point.  This was simple to install on Android.  Easier to set the profile and start using it.

The question is would this become overwhelming at an event like SXSW and what is the range at which it will pick up?  How does it decide when you have enough random people blasting? I am not talking privacy controls, but the options when I am in public mode at an event.

**Disclosure: One of the founders, Caleb Elston, participates constantly in TheSocialGeeks podcast I produce but in no way would I not take the opportunity to still talk about this app like I had never heard of it.

So many still ask, what’s the point? I simplified it like they do on the About pages. Instead of reading through reviews looking for the best entire restaurants in your city, this serves up the best dishes. The best of everything in any category. If you want to eat only the best pasta, salad and then a dessert, who says they have to be at the same restaurant?  Foodspotting lets you see the best dish in any given area using your phone GPS.  From there you can search, see what your friends like and more.

Of course, they were smart enough to forge some form of game into the system to help make it addictive.  You can become an expert on specific food groups/types (and be known as an excellent photographer as well) and build Noms on the foods you find that others want or say they like as well.  You can get marks for a great find or great shot.  Commenting and more also appear.

Google Maps is built into their homepage and new finds pop up on the map, even before you log in.  From there you can narrow by location, category and friends.  They added widgets for your blog/website to expand their reach.  The team at Foodspotting even took the next step to integrate Foursquare.  So when you find that dish, go ahead and check in at the same time.

Lists of most active users, top users and more can be easily found.  You can connect to Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and Instagram to share as well as find friends from those networks.

In essence they have done all the basics right, from the start.  I enjoyed the responsiveness of the team before and during the beta and look forward to what they have in future releases.

Look for the app on iPhone/iPod/iPad and Android.

Brightkite was a leader in the check-in space.  Competition came along just as any industry evolves.  Soon the media was measuring, weighing and comparing capabilities.  Brightkite consistently won early charts.  But something shifted.  Mass media help drive consumers one specific direction, shutting out specific players.  The press started reporting on mainly one or two location services only.

Brightkite suffered a final blow when two founders left for another startup launch.  Leadership lost in this market can be the demise if they were some of the brains behind it.  I am not saying the team there is not talented.  It would be much like Zuckerberg leaving Facebook or Dennis leaving Foursquare.

So what do you do when the space for free location services gets too crowded?  You emerge again with a new business plan and untapped market.  I am not saying that group texting is something needed in the market.  Most phones allow this ability natively.  (Yes you must specify everyone each time, but it is there).  Even Blackberry with the new Messenger version has groups that allows chat, pictures, calendars and more.

Does the relationship that Foursquare and Gowalla share with businesses impact the promotion?  Definitely!  It was something that Brightkite never went after.  Some inherent form of business relationship to drive a larger userbase while still having media appeal.  Brightkite was first, in my eyes, with pictures, walls to track check-ins by location (not jsut person) and more features.  They still have the underlying technology that many of these other players should be interested in.

I bid a fond farewell to the check-in service portion of Brightkite and wish them the best in the group texting market.

Connect with me on Foursquare or Gowalla for now.  I hope to soon add Tri-Out to that list..

Note: You can go back and see how often I write about location services, I believe they have a place in marketing, consumers and social media.  I hope they continue to evolve and compete.

The idea is simple.  Pull together your social army (oh so close to Mafia Wars).  There is:

• levels
• experience points
• attack points
• battles
• wins
• losses
• weapons
• and more …

To start a war, either use one of your mayorship locations, or just pick something.

# How do I attack an opponent?
# You can select a target from nearby venues or friends’ venues. After you select a target, you choose a weapon from your arsenal and tap “Attack” button to attack. Your attack may hit or miss, depending on the accuracy of the weapon and the distance to the target. For every attack, there is always a counter-attack from your opponent. The counter attack may hit or miss as well.

From there you just battle.  Now you do not get mayor rights to their location, but I think this is more virtual turf wars.  To gain supporters they must click a link in Twitter.  So the more followers that click your links the better.  this becomes more of who will click over how many followers.

So if you just cannot spend enough time checking in and need to protect your fiefdom, this might be the game for you.

Foursquare is trying the game approach coupled with specials from advertisers that show based on your location.  The ads are tiny, in the upper right as green icons, but it is monetization.  Gaming the system to be mayor is harder than before.  As I stay mayor or a location, do I really gain anything?  Has anyone made business connections?  Has anyone gained followers you can reach by being mayor? Does the number of tokens I receive get me business?

Google Latitude just shows where you are.  Plain and simple. It works across Google Maps on all the platforms and makes no promise to do anything more for you.  I appreciate the simplicity, but know Google has much more planned around Google Ads based on my location soon enough.

Brightkite, one of my longtime favorites, offers a linking of pictures, posts and comments around a place.  But, they seemingly have gotten lost in all the Foursquare buzz recently.  The service is running strong, but I wait for the monetization to kick in as well.

It goes on from there. The point I am getting at (lengthy as I sit down at World Cup with time to think) is how all of these benefit me.  What have I gained by sharing my location?  Is the effort put into broadcasting my location measurable with any return?  or does it drive revenue for the location service itself to sell ads based on the number of subscribers geographically?

So I am asking the location services, new and old.  Show me yours (plan to assist me) and I will continue to show you mine.

After you create an account, it prompts you to allow them to authorize them using the Foursquare API and read your stream of checkins.  From there, it will tell you how many checkins you have at a location, who the mayor is and how many more you should need to steal the title.

You can even search for a particular site if you have your eyes on being mayor there or if they are running an upcoming special.  All thanks to When Will I Be Mayor.  It was interesting to see how far behind I was in certain spots and how far ahead in others.  So using it in reverse let’s you know who is creeping up behind you as well.

I have written recently about how Foursquare has failed me, and this does not detract or add to that.  It is just a good implementation of the API to show how mayorships works inside the game known as Foursquare.

1. location service wars
2. privacy statements

Yes, they are both important items, but I feel that the press is forcing me to believe that location services are the big news.  ReadWriteWeb(with over 30 articles on location at SxSW) tried to break the news on CheckIn, (from the makers of Brightkite) to no avail.  Humorously I wrote about this very idea Saturday before seeing the article they wrote.

What I have gathered from all of the news is the sheer madness in the number of checkins, the number of friend requests and the limited consumer side usability of the data. Sites like Vicarious.ly perform a Google mashup of checkins overlayed on the map in Austin.  In about 10 minutes you can’t see the city blocks through all the checkin icons popping up.  Great, people are tweeting like mad and checking in wherever they walk.  What does it do for me?  Will the forthcoming firehouse approach to all this location data give me anything more than a headache?

Should we fall into the trap of helping predict a winner from all of the great, and varied, location services out there?  Do we trust badges? Events? More locations? Games? Better descriptors? More friends that are also users?  I don’t quite know where to begin on any of these options.

With the hundreds of panels down there, where the heck is the rest of the news?

I have no groupings, easy search or other feature for locating just the user I want.  Not everyone broadcasts or has a widget.  Not everyone uses the same service so interoperability is non-existent.

So how do I best query where you might be?  What if you check in when you leave somewhere for privacy?  I am now at a loss to whittle through what are considered close friends, social friends and just followers.  As well as what service any one person might be on.  Could this be the birth of a winner or the death of many of the services?

How well does it really work for conferences like SXSW or Lotusphere back in January?  Everyone is very fluid during the day, moving at a constant pace.  By the time you check in and I check for you, you have moved and checked in again.  Latitude gets the closest in providing accurate and real-time updating as compared to the others.

Where is the value in this form of activity?  Is it in my ability to trace my own movements?  How long should I plan on being at a location before I get the urge to check in?  is there a rule on being in place?  Is there a rule on time before moving?

How do we bridge the location services into something more than an advertising platform for restaurants, bars and vendors to a service we need as people?  Is utilizing the service about a discount or socializing and locating?

- A client, other than the mobile web, for mobile devices and smartphones.  The iPhone is the place they will start.  The BlackBerry and Android should be soon to follow.  With the native client I can interact faster, add far more integration into the device itself and provide an experience based on the device, not the website.

- Enable site tagging from the mobile interface.  See above first in making a proper client.  I already have fields for name, address, cross street, phone numbers and even Twitter accounts for the location.  How about one for tagging?  Having this only available via the web leaves most places with no definition.  You have search enabled for tagging, but not entering.  No wonder there are so many empty.

- Allow me to find my friends in any city as a toggle.  Just because I am not in NYC that instant doesn’t mean I am not headed there or want to locate someone.  The mobile web only shows me the local people.  A great choice for default, but expand it, allowing me to see everyone in my network when needed.

- Open more of the great stats found online to the mobile device.  A native client would make this simpler but just adding this would add some interest.  Even when exploring other people.  How active are they, where do they go most.  (Almost moves toward stalking, but they have to approve you first anyway)

- Speed the process of creating new badges.  I liked the idea of being able to outline and submit ideas for new badges. It was hard to find, and many I asked didn’t know you could do it.  But a great way for businesses to have their own.  Think of sports teams making a badge for those that check in at their venue a specific number of times.  A great incentive that could have awards behind it.  The same stands true for restaurants as well.

As I add more friends and am able to see how they interact, I still wonder where the revenue model is unless ads are a short time coming.  I am not talking intrusive ads, but ones where a sponsor is able to place an ad around where you check in, meaning you have an interest in that already.  Not just wildly placed ones that had no bearing on my likes and past visits.  Yes, this is how FourSquare also acts being able to create a pseudo history of places you go and how they are tagged.  All learned behavior.  Look out for something like the Facebook Credit Card coming along base on those same premises.