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).