Remember and share places easily with the new Tagcrumbs iPhone app

Our brand new Tagcrumbs iPhone app is now available for download from Apple's App Store at www.tagcrumbs.com/go/iphone. Check it out!

With Tagcrumbs you can remember and share your discoveries with your friends and the world. It's about those locations that you enjoy visiting, where you spend some time, experience something special and that you would readily recommend to others. This can be a beach or diving spot you discovered during a holiday, a museum or park that you visited or the café on the corner with the best espresso.

Asking yourself what to do around where you are? With the application you'll also have access to all of the favorite places of our growing community.

Enough talk, see for yourself:



Let's gather and share all of the great things to see and do around the world. The iPhone app is free, by the way (download here: www.tagcrumbs.com/go/iphone).

More info needed? Here's our press release.

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Tagcrumbs iPhone App: Launch in January

We are excited to announce that in a few days time - on January 12th - we'll be launching Tagcrumbs for iPhone. We've long been waiting for this moment to come and are eager to have all of you try it.

Tagcrumbs for iPhone helps you share your favorite places with friends on the go. Similar to what you've seen on the website, it's all about exciting locations to swim, dive, slackline, surf, climb, fish; famous landmarks, stunning viewpoints and sublime architecture; laid-back parks for barbecues and picnics. And all your other favorite hangouts like restaurants, bars, cafés and shops.

The app will be available in both English and German from the start and we've been busy to include some nifty features:

• No sign-up required: if you'd just like to try Tagcrumbs you're very welcome to do so. Tag some places and save them on your iPhone and find out what's nearby. To upload your discoveries and share them, you can always sign up later.
  
• Offline use: imagine you're abroad and discover an awesome place. Tag it right there and upload it when you're back home or via WiFi in the hotel. 
• All of your places, favorites and followers are automatically synchronized between the website and your iPhone.

Here's a first impression of how it'll look like:

Tagcrumbs iPhone App

Tagcrumbs Website: New Features and Design

Lately we've been busy to give our website a fresh look and integrate your feedback. With your help, the Tagcrumbs has grown up a bit - but still we'd love to hear your feedback, ideas and thoughts! This is what helps us make the community a bit better every day.

Let's dive right into some of the new things that await you on the website:

Images: many of you asked for the possibility to add images to your places. Well - now you can! This should make your discoveries even more interesting for your friends.

Maps: we've had maps before - but now they're much bigger. And on each place pages, an extra map gives you a good overview of where the place is.

Profile: we've completely revised the profile so now you have all your stats, latest comments and places as well as an overview of who you're following on one page.

You can check out all the new things on the website: www.tagcrumbs.com. Or have a quick look at a video tour of the site:

Location-based ... everything.

What's currently happening in the location-based services arena? It's an incredibly competitive space, that's for sure. There are several interesting approaches and here's a quick overview. Originally posted as a comment on TechCrunch.

1. Location-based games
Location-based games are currently being (rightfully, in my opinion) hyped because the rate of user adoption and active use (a couple of times a day) is fabulous. It's fun to check in to places, compete against others for a good ranking on the leader board - and maybe even some free coffee when you're mayor. Let me add another European-based company who'll soon be competing with the Gowallas and Foursquares: Aka-aki.

2. Friendfinding services
Friendfinding services, too are interesting - albeit in comparison to l-b games they look a bit pale as those games allow you to do the same thing (share your whereabouts) and play a game at the same time.

3. The good & bad
What's great about both approaches: it takes very little effort to participate. What's not so great: the information that is generated by both types of services isn't very valuable in the long-term. Of course it's great for pattern analysis and better behavioral targeting but that's about it ("the half life of a check-in").

4. Placemarking
And then there's this opportunity that Tagcrumbs is targeting. It's focussed on creating valuable content rather than interacting with existing content.

So while l-b games will surely have a bright future, the mid and long-term looks promising for content creation (i.e. placemarking?) services:

Rather than connecting people via a gaming-mechanism, the placemarking services help people share discoveries with friends and build new relationships with others that share similar interests.

For people interested in coffee-shops and restaurants (in fact: who isn't) this might sound lame but for more specific fields of interest (think divers, climbers, sailors, architecture fans, history geeks, …) this might prove quite interesting. Those people are however already gathering in specific social networks, frequent the same websites, read the same magazines, etc...

5. So?
Here at Tagcrumbs we do see this as an opportunity, not a hindrance. We take the fragmentation of this space as a given and try to play with it, knowing that we differentiate starkly from the other companies in our field with this approach (no matter if it's Whrrl, Nextstop, …).

Let me explain: next to our end-user offering (which is open to all types of places - and btw. we just submitted the iPhone app yesterday), we'll offer each of these groups their very own location-based content service - which can integrate with Tagcrumbs or even stay independent (do I smell a biz model here?).

If you like it's a bit like Ning - just for physical locations (and a clear focus on mobile). We'll provide the infrastructure so that location-based content can be efficiently exchanged. What's the result then: many very narrow fields of interest (i.e. 'vertical markets') where we enable the group members to exchange the locations of their interest.

Questions? Opinions?

Tagcrumbs at Le Web 2009

LeWeb09 is coming up next week (Dec. 9 and 10) in Paris. More than 2.000 participants signed up to the event this year, a great list of high-quality speakers and round tables has been announced and everybody attending is thrilled with anticipation (judging from the many tweets and blog posts that are popping up). It's without a doubt one of the most important web (and mobile) related events of the year.

A diverse crowd of entrepreneurs, technologists and thinkers from a host of different countries will gather in Paris during these days and will surely make each one who'll be attending leave with new inspirations and ideas.

Here's what I'm looking forward to most:

• Two sessions dedicated to mobile applications. A round table (including the CEO of wildly successful Shazam, and the founder of Tapulous) as well as a session on business models for mobile apps, which will conclude the second day. 
• Lively exchange with fellow entrepreneurs from all over Europe (and beyond). 
• Showcase our iPhone app and get some reactions.  
  
• Test our iPhone app's "offline" feature in real-world conditions (ability to tag places without an Internet connection and synchronize them when you're on a WiFi connection or back home).

And of course I'd be glad to help out other attendees with a hint or two on what to do or see in Paris... please feel free to get in touch and let's meet up!

Get in touch via Twitter (@tagcrumbs or directly with me (Benedikt) @forcevive).

Mobile Monday Berlin Recap. What's the state of Location-Based Services?

Two days ago I attended the Mobile Monday in Berlin that took place at the HomeBase Lounge, a nice event location with an exciting 360° panorama screen and a focus on hosting events for the media industry. So, what is the Mobile Monday?

MobileMonday is a global community of mobile industry visionaries, developers and influentials fostering cooperation and cross-border business development through virtual and live networking events to share ideas, best practices and trends from global markets. [Src: www.mobile-monday.de]

The focus of this specific Mobile Monday was Location Based Services and the event teaser stated early on the common opinion...

For many years, Location Based Services (LBS) have been the most disappointing "Killer Application" of the Mobile Internet. Technically, it was possible to locate a mobile phone user based on his proximity to mobile network cells and offer him bespoke services as early as 2001. But the well-known hindrances of the German mobile business - namely handset fragmentation and suffocating operator policies - prevented LBS to ever take off. [Src: http://www.mobile-monday.de/events/location-based-services]

Disappointing or not, Location Based Services are popping up everywhere and there is a crowded ecosystem with startups developing products for mobile devices covering friend finder, location tracking or discovery services, to name a few. The presentations covered a broad range of mobile topics, infrastructure providers (Qualcomm, Skyhook Wireless), a device manufacturer (Nokia), consumer services (Aloqa, Woabi, Skobbler, Aka-Aki, Servtag, Vooch), up to a venture capitalist (Kizoo). The general impression: a lot of experimentation is going on but maybe this is the only path to success. Experimentation with respect to revenue models, product features and designs, targeted platforms or the company's focus in general.

Some random notes:

Nokia's Social Locations group with over 250 employees is situated in Berlin and focuses on developing internet services, a more and more strategically important area for Nokia. Mapping and navigation plays a key role in these service offerings, supported by several acquisitions (e.g. Gate 5 or Plazes; both from Berlin).

“Our goal is clear, and that is to make it effortless for our partners to create highly appealing, context-relevant applications that consumers will find indispensable.” Niklas Savander, EVP, Services, Nokia

The presented OVI SDK is nice but yet another platform that developers could target, platform-specific UI components have to prove their efficiency, reusability and ease of use. Using HTML, JavaScript and CSS for mobile development is nothing new, there are web views within SDKs for every platform or widget engines trying to achieve similar things (from a consumer perspective). Better integration into the whole device can make this approach successful but on the other hand the whole concept of mobile web applications is better suited to be platform independent and open.

Aka-Aki made an entertaining presentation asking where the user's value is and that they will move more into mobile dating with their 300.000+ member strong social network. Sounds like experimentation or the typical problem of social networks to find the right monetization approach. I'm waiting for an Android app to judge better. ;)

Woabi is a barcode scanning application that tells you more about products of all kinds. Barcoo is a competitor in this area; both companies are from Berlin. It worked ok, the app found 3 out of 5 random products on or near my desk. The integration with finding nearby offers for the product is well done. As a minor advice: let the users know how to scan a barcode, there is only one correct orientation to hold your device, the intuitive one is often wrong...

The Aloqa speaker had the courage to say that they are technology driven, not often the case in Germany, thumbs up, and the result is a very nice application for local discovery with a lot of good feedback so far and a high potential (e.g. location-aware recommendations; adaptive content; smart notifications and high customization). Definitely one of my favorite LBS apps, check it out.

The speaker from Kizoo Technology Ventures immediately pointed out that for a VC the presented LBS concepts are not sufficient enough to get investment from his perspective. Ideas too small, markets too small, revenue models to small... but the mobile ecosystem is extremely about scale, so nothing can be too small or narrowed down?

Oh, I should mention Tagcrumbs as an awesome LBS ;), we are heavily working on our platform launch and thus some more weeks in kind of a stealth mode.

To conclude, it is great to see such a healthy LBS and mobile ecosystem here in Berlin. I am looking forward to the next event!

Photo credits to philcampbell on Flickr.

Interact with your Facebook Friends on Tagcrumbs with Facebook Connect

Just recently we wrote about our OpenID Integration, that allows you to create a Tagcrumbs account and sign into it without requiring another password.

The advantages are obvious, but many of you will have a Facebook account already. Instead of OpenID you can also use your Facebook account to create a new Tagcrumbs account or to log into your existing Tagcrumbs account, as we are officially supporting Facebook Connect.

Connecting your account with Facebook brings you two more benefits besides easy authentication...

Keep all your friends up to date

Each time you discover a great new place you will have the option to notify all your Facebook friends about it, directly on the Tagcrumbs website. Sharing an existing Tagcrumb with your Facebook friends is also possible. You will be able to add some additional details and post directly to your Facebook Stream:

Your Facebook friends will then be able to interact with your post by commenting or "liking" it:

Find your Facebook friends on Tagcrumbs and invite others

You can use Tagcrumbs to just remember places for yourself, but the real fun begins when you start to interact with your friends on Tagcrumbs. You can invite any of your Facebook friends to join Tagcrumbs:

And soon you can easily befriend all of your existing Facebook friends on Tagcrumbs. This saves you the hassle of finding and adding all the same friends again and you will be able to share stuff and see what your friends discovered on Tagcrumbs in no time!

Roundup

We are all heavy Facebook users and therefore very excited about Tagcrumbs & Facebook Connect, as we see Tagcrumbs as an extension to existing social networks like Facebook. The next version of Tagcrumbs, on which we are working currently, will have even better Facebook support.

And hey, if you are a Facebook user, you should become a fan of Tagcrumbs on Facebook!