Rating: 77% check into LB networks from home
Some very puzzling stats have emerged from a survey carried out by mobile content aggregator, Myxer. Over 1,500 Myxer users in the USA, took part in a poll concerning location based social network. The report found that 77 per cent of respondents said they check into their location based network at home, more often than checking in from other venues. It also found that two of the more ‘hyped’ services – Foursquare and Gowalla – only captured 8 per cent of the votes. By contrast, Booyah’s MyTown claimed 56 per cent of those polled.
Something very strange is going on. Location-based social networks are not as mainstream as it’s perceived, if this survey is right.
Myxer isn’t a niche mobile site. Over 38 million users have performed more than 1.6 billion cumulative downloads from the Myxer site.
Yet of the 1,500 who bothered to respond to the poll, only 11 per cent of respondents actually claim to actively use them. After MyTown, Loopt came in second place at 12 per cent.
Equally shocking were the reasons why the 89 per cent of respondents hadn’t used such services – only 14 per cent claimed privacy as the reason.
Top reason was a lack of interest – claimed by 56 per cent – followed by nearly a quarter (23 per cent) who reported that their phone doesn’t have the capability.
Some of those surely don’t know their phone actually has GPS, we suspect.
What is encouraging is that of those who do use location based social networks, 31 per cent said they check in at least once a day, while an impressive 26 per cent said they check-in every hour.
Just over half said that they have used location based social networks to attend a venue.
What kind of venue? Well, the most popular were music events (36 per cent), followed by restaurants (28 per cent) and bar/clubs (19 per cent).
“We believe the success of such services hinges on the passive gaming element which may supersede true online-to-offline event discovery,” observed Myk Willis, CEO with Myxer.
The overall conclusion is that usage of location based network is growing but awareness seems to be appallingly low.
myxer is the best music a brother can find n music is not my life