LBS "check-in" competition

At present, the domestic muttering, open, street, cut off and so on to place the service for the innovative application of the site began to receive more and more attention, this seems to indicate: location-based information services, is accelerating in the Internet to open up a more imaginative and development potential of a unique area.

Who will be able to laugh at the end of this world of lbs? At the beginning of this month, I was fortunate to participate in "who will be the boss of China's lbs" Salon, with friends in the industry to carry out a number of face-to-face views of the collision, benefited a lot.

Who can laugh to the end, the key is to find out: What is the key factor in determining the success of a check-in lbs information service?

The answer is user size: and the size of the user will form a magnetic suction effect, making the strong constant strong.

The user-scale is the only key to determining the success of a social feature, based on user check-in behavior and social networking features, whether it is booming microblogs or professional social networking sites.

The theory of Network economics tells us: the application service that constructs in the contact demand between people, from the telecommunication operator to the Internet Information service provider, the "user lock-in" effect decides, the user scale has become the key factor that decides the growth.

Eric Consulting that the 2010 China position registration industry users 3.3 million, 2013 will reach 81 million, according to the report, by the end of February 2011, according to the number of users of mobile phone clients, muttering to 2 million in the first place, the street, play turn quartet, open open and so on, respectively, 750,000, 300,000, 220,000 columns thereafter. From the user-scale figures, muttering in the first stage has achieved obvious advantages.

But the size of the user only proves to be successful now, muttering about the need to address the internal factors that ensure the user's growth to win and maintain a competitive advantage with the Giants.

The author thinks that reducing the terminal access threshold, merchant resources and its financing ability, open cooperation mode and the business innovation based on the information initiative will be the key to determine the competitive ability of the service provider.

First, the terminal is the key threshold to restrict user growth.

We need to recognize that, while smartphones are already widely available in China, high-end smartphone owners are limited in size, and switching phones for lbs is not a rational user behavior. Otherwise, the three operators will not have been pushing thousands of smartphones to develop their own users.

From the current public information to see, muttering, Street, open in this regard to adopt a different strategy. The quartet is mainly to support the iphone, BlackBerry and other high-end smartphones; the street is mainly adapted to smart operating systems such as iOS and Android; muttering clients from iOS, Android to MTK, adopt a high school low total coverage strategy to support more than 200 brands.

A large number of potential users means a variety of mobile phone models and operating systems, location registration service providers need to have a strong cross-platform development technology, according to the characteristics of the Chinese market, reduce mobile phone users to enter the threshold of lbs.

Second, the attractive business resources and continuous acquisition capability is the key to solving the user's sign-in.

Check-in Class location Service must be combined with E-commerce is one of the views of the industry friends at the time, for experience and fun, without long-term incentives, it is difficult to maintain the user's active, the characteristics of the merchant resources to become a long-term driving factor.

Several domestic different, in the business cooperation, muttering network dedicated to set up a team to butt large well-known brand merchants, through the cooperation with the big brands to influence other ordinary businesses, so as to cultivate the use of lbs website habits and loyalty. This year, muttering network and McDonald's jointly launched the signing of the marketing campaign, activities on line 1.5 months, the number of users to sign up to 600,000, electronic Maleca activation rate of more than 78%, the success of the cooperation attracted many brands to talk about the network to discuss cooperation; The street is mainly with group buying website cooperation, as a location service provider model and business cooperation.

Mumble net Mr. Lisong has openly said that, in contrast to other traditional marketing methods, muttering about the way the business services, more can be overlooked for the local businessmen to provide accurate, interactive and creative marketing Services: "Soon, lbs should become a SNS website, micro-blog After the popularity of businesses are popular precision marketing new ways." ”

On the other hand, for users, richer, more accurate business information services, will further promote the use of "check-in" enthusiasm, and to a large extent to avoid users in the early impulse and curiosity experience, the number of growth limitations.

Third, open cooperation, user resource sharing will help to play a competitive synergy effect.

The essence of social characteristics is the need for Internet information providers to be able to more open and share user information, especially for those who have sufficient size of users in the location of the network information, they need to realize that location information itself does not form a separate profitable business enough space

In this regard, to mutter, play turn the quartet as a typical representative, are taking a full range of cooperation model, with terminal manufacturers, portal microblogging, group purchase, SNS sites have social characteristics of the partners to cooperate, the intention to build their own network forms of competition mode, to play a synergistic effect. and the public comments and the customer is mainly based on their own merchant resource information or game resources, taking a relatively independent mode of operation.

But with the social development of mobile Internet, the sharing of user information becomes the key to the cooperation of all parties, Micro Bo is a typical case, in this regard, muttering, street, Open, who will take the first step, with the relevant manufacturers to form an exclusive advantage of cooperation, who will be able to gain competition and growth synergy.

Forth, the initiative of information-driven business innovation will get the first advantage.

In the salon discussion, the author thinks that the position registration service provider, must solve the user in the check-in process, to the preferential business Information high discovery cost, namely, needs to be possible avoids the user two times active search question.

In other words, location registration must be associated with the active push of information in order to produce value to users. In this regard to the author of the use of experience, muttering to do a certain useful try, in the mobile phone client with the initiative to push the vicinity of the preferential, related tasks, seconds, such as the novelty of the play.

Of course, the ideal way may be to combine with Bluetooth or SMS, and the combination of geo-fencing, to the client outside the initiative to promote information. In this respect, in fact, and operators have more space for cooperation.

This, of course, requires a murmur of sufficient demand analysis and research, combined with China's consumption behavior, to carry out business and experience of continuous innovation. For the check-in position information service provider, must maintain this kind of demand the insight ability and the business innovation ability, this obviously is a slow work, is also the malt.

It can be said that the mobile internet business is becoming the standard ability to configure location services, need to mutter for the representative of the domestic manufacturers, quickly form their own user scale barriers, in order to maintain the first advantage in the market competition, the first hair if you can adapt to the trend of multiple terminals, the formation of unique business resources and can be in business innovation , adapt to the Chinese market's user behavior habits, can maintain long-term sustainable competitive and value-added advantages.