With an update to a quaint little tab called “Nearby” on Monday, Facebook’s expanding mobile strategy is finally taking shape. Watch out, though, there's going to be collateral damage.

Facebook Doubles Back  

After Places flopped, Facebook snatched up Gowalla, a Foursquare competitor co-founded in 2007 by Josh Williams and Scott Raymond. It also bought Glancee, an app that emerged out of this year's brief obsession with ambient location services. "While Josh Williams is leading the location team that built Nearby, former Gowalla employees are working on other products at Facebook, including Scott Raymond who's working on our mobile photo products," a Facebook spokesperson told ReadWrite. "We spent a lot of 2012 working to improve the foundation of our mobile products and today's update to Nearby positions us well to offer more location aware features on mobile in the new year." 

A Facebook Newsroom blog post about its latest mobile update might as well be describing Foursquare: "...open the [Nearby] tab to find local spots your friends have recommended, checked into, or liked. If you’re looking for a place to eat, choose a category like Restaurants to see what’s nearby... tap to see info like friends who’ve been there and business hours."  

Uh-oh. 

Making Money On Mobile... Finally?

If Nearby gains traction, it could be mean big things for Facebook’s mobile revenue stream. Monday's update is only the beginning of Nearby’s new direction, one sure to be long and lucrative for Pages. Nearby was formerly a pretty bare bones way to check in to a spot and tag who you’re hanging out with, but it won't be a quiet feature for long. 

The newly robust vision of Nearby sure pulls the company’s acquisition of geosocial Foursquare rival Gowalla into clearer view. Gowalla boarded up its windows this March, officially integrating into Facebook’s team, ostensibly to beef up Timeline. 

Earlier this year, Facebook admitted that it “[did] not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products” before Zuckerberg did a 180 this fall, declaring that not only is Facebook ramping up in mobile, but that it’s actually a full-fledged "mobile company” now. 

Badges Are So 2010

Foursquare may still be growing, but it offers little that's compelling to new users. In September 2012, the geosocial app boasted 25 million users, up from 20 million in April. But most of Foursquare's members use it to complement a major social network, namely Facebook or Twitter.

Before Facebook came back with its new mobile direction, Foursquare might have been distinct enough to stand its ground. When Foursquare first hit, it had that playful, mobile-only vibe that makes Instagram feel fun. It gamified everyday life, awarding in-app badges for patterns of activity and special check-ins. Foursquare devotees and badge-junkies might still enjoy the thrill of unlocking a rare virtual reward, but the novelty is wearing thin. 

Beyond Foursquare, Yelp could be in threatened too. If local businesses take their proverbial business elsewhere, the company's ad-powered revenue stream could be seriously endangered. But the local-reviews leader hedged its bets against Facebook considerably better than Foursquare did. Yelp is stuffed to the gills with unique, user-submitted data. 

Google has its own check-in and local reviews tricks up its sleeve - Google has a bit of everything, after all. Now that Google+ is the epicenter of its social universe, Google's geosocial long-game is anyone's guess, but Google is anything but a one-trick pony.

Check-Ins Come Standard

Foursquare has come a long way over the years, but it's still all about check-ins. Instagram's location-tagging service is powered by Foursquare, and Foursquare check-ins can be zapped to a Facebook Timeline. The problem is that check-ins are a nice tool for adding depth to more interesting activities, like photo sharing. But they're an afterthought - not an app-worthy activity in their own right.

With Facebook's aggressive new mobile direction materializing, Foursquare had better be looking over its shoulder. If check-ins now come standard with other, richer social experiences, why open Foursquare at all?

Why indeed?

From a security standpoint, Android has always been a case of untapped potential.

The Two Sides Of Android Security

On one hand, it's an open and popular operating system, which means it's a prime target for hackers. According to researchers from Georgia Tech, 2013 will be the year mobile malware gets serious, and Android is vulnerable. Google's App Verification Service, which is supposed to identify harmful applications upon instalation, is kind of a flop, and the majority of users don't install any third-party antivirus software.

On the other hand, Android's dominance and openness also creates a market for third parties to try to fix these problems, and that's just what Optio Labs, created by Allied Minds, claims to have done. The mobile device management and security firm has recently released a hardened version of Android that includes a bunch of baked-in security features – and not just malware detection.

The OptioCore OS and administrative tools (Optio MDM) will be distributed through a series of hardware partners and software integrators. But the company was unwilling to share specifics: "We are in collaboration with numerous established, multi-national OEMs, systems integrators and software companies on various strategic initiatives and commercial activities." We'll know soon enough, as devices using the new OS should be available in late 2013, and the PR push should begin even sooner.

Lots Of Security Features

So what does OptioCore do? Pretty much everything.

First, there's malware protection. The company claims to protect against "all known Android malware variants including Rage against the Cage and other root exploits."

Second, there's auditing down to the application level, which is good news for regulated businesses.

Third, based on policies that can be stored locally or in the cloud, admins can remotely administer or wipe phones, view devices that are out of compliance, and perform all of the other features that are common to Mobile Device Management (MDM) applications. It even allows users to store different profiles on a phone, so a work wipe won't affect personal files.

That's all great to have, but it can already be done with existing software. What really makes Optio's Android different is the system's ability to tie into location-based services.

Location, Location, Location

Admins can lock down phone behaviors through PhantomLink, a service that uses Bluetooth "beacons" to determine physical proximity. If you want to disable a phone's cameras or turn off texting in a product development meeting, you can. You can also require physical presence in a location to access documents or applications, ensuring that data can't slip out the door to your office, even if the devices accessing that data go home with your workers every night.

If you already have an MDM solution you like, OptioLabs isn't against using it, but the vendor will have to write its own hooks into OptioCore via an application programming interface (API). That means early adopters will probably be playing around with the bundled tools for at least a few months.

The OS is also open to further customization, particularly for vertical markets with specific needs that can't be met through the MDM console. According to Brian Dougherty, OptioLabs' Director of Engineering, "OptioCore can be augmented with additional procedures and controls to create custom, domain-specific flavors of OptioCore." Security reviews for these products would happen through a third party.

OptioCore isn't perfect – someone with physical access to the hardware could still root the phone – but being able to tie into physical spaces via PhantomLink should dramatically limit the risk of intentional or accidental data leakage. If it all works, it's a massive step toward making BYOD manageable, and since it's still Android, there's a good chance it will run on phones employees actually want to bring to work.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock.

Craigslist virtually buried the print classifieds of yore, but it has done nothing to keep up with the Web's brisk evolution since. Adding dynamic location data seems like a no-brainer, but Craigslist's Spartan design never bothered with such geographical niceties. That is, until it recently decided to keep up with the Joneses.

Rather than patting Craigslist on the back for adding a feature that any other site might have included oh, ten years ago, I'll look at how it stacks up against the competition - and hopefully find a place to live while I'm at it.

Craigslist: Right From The Source

As someone who moves once a year (at least), I'm frustrated that Craigslist's pseudo-innovation is just an 11th-hour effort to stymie worthy competitors. But I grudgingly dragged myself back to the site to see if thumbing through its apartment listings has gotten any less painful.

True to Craigslist's lo-fi esthetic, the new maps feature resides under an ugly little green button in the site's housing sub-sections. Prior to the update, the site's geographical filters were abysmal at best. For New York and San Francisco, you could (and still can) filter listings by neighborhood, but in most major cities you had to wade through a whole metro area's worth of posts, tossing keywords into the search box and hoping for the best.

Now, the maps tab, built using Leaflet, organizes those housing results on a zoomable city map. Listings near each other are clustered. Individual listings do show photos, but the "more info" button proved buggy almost every time I clicked it. Still, the new feature maps price, small photos, and other basics at a glance. Overall, the mapping interface is an improvement, but when it comes to the lumbering UI dinosaur that is Craigslist, that isn't saying a whole lot.

Pros: Some at-a-glance info, big improvement over no mapping utility at all.

Cons: Very limited features, no sorting and saving, manual zooming is a hassle.

Padmapper: The Scrappy Little Tool That Rolls With The Punches

Eric DeMenthon built Padmapper as a side project to help him and his friends find a decent place to live in New York. The tool, which collects housing listings from sites like Craigslist onto an interactive map, has remained quietly useful for years. Unfortunately, Craigslist ordered it to cease and desist this year, but thanks to a workaround through data distribution platform 3Taps, Padmapper is still kicking - for now, at least.

For Padmapper, the map is the name of the game. Pull up the site and you get a full window's worth of city blocks. You can ask the map to display listings based on a robust set of filters including ranges for price, number of bedrooms, age of listing and more. Dig in a little deeper and you can display very granular sets of listings, like pet-friendly sublets featuring the keyword "vegan" (here in Portland, that didn't winnow things down much).

Unlike Craigslist, Padmapper remains useful after you've closed your search window. Log in and save favorite listings, annotate potential future homes right from the map, or set up email alerts for a fine-tuned search. 

Pros: Extremely useful filters, fast and dynamic map interface, save listings for later easily, includes listings from Apartments.com, Rent.com and more.

Cons: Craigslist data may become unavailable, making PadMapper a lot less useful. UI isn't particularly attractive.

Lovely: The Refined Aggregator

Compared to its peers, Lovely is... well, lovely. I spoke with founder and CEO Blake Pierson about what sets his newly national service apart. "The renting process is very broken," he says. He describes Lovely as both "a product and a data company." meaning that not only is Lovely a pleasure to use, but even if Craigslist data blinked out, other rental data partners would be pick up the slack. 

If Padmapper is a quick-and-dirty pet project, Lovely is its refined successor. The site features the most elegant design by a mile. A full-window map makes it easy to see listings in neighborhoods at a glance or to drill down into individual posts without ever needing to leave the main interface. Lovely is extremely quick and rich with filters for price, pets, neighborhood and other essentials. 

Lovely is the only one of the three that ties into Facebook, which makes signing up and maintaining a consistent login a breeze. The design is responsive and clean, but the map itself didn't feel quite as smooth as Padmapper, nor did it have an option to annotate a listing (I use this constantly) or hide a place you're not interested in. Still, the Lovely experience does handle saved searches and a centralized user profile very well, so you don't have to double back or waste time figuring out which places you've seen and which you haven't. Like Padmapper, Lovely employs the 3Taps workaround to populate its Craigslist data, but it also pulls listings from other sources. 

Pros: Very feature rich, best design, account and profile emphasis, indexes the most non-Craigslist listings.

Cons: Lacks a few of Padmapper's handiest tricks.

Craigslist's mapping effort is predictably too little, too late. But the listings giant's shortcomings did inspire Padmapper and Lovely, which are both amazing resources. I found no compelling reason whatsoever to use Craigslist's "new" interface, but the site still boasts the biggest trove of rental data around. Too bad it insists on locking up its treasure and throwing away the key.

"We think it's a good thing for the whole space," says David Hodge, CEO of Embark, a mobile transit app that received a nod from New York's MTA earlier this year. "Ultimately, it will be better for users. It might be a little bit of a rough transition at first, but I think it will get pretty good pretty quickly." 

The Challenges of Mapping Mass Transit 

Why is Apple shipping one of its biggest mobile utilities without such an important feature? For one, transit mapping is no easy task, and Apple doesn't have the resources to do it well while also finishing iOS 6, the next version of its mobile operating system. Even Google Transit, which is pretty comprehensive on a global scale, doesn't always do a perfect job of returning public transit information for a given locale. Anybody who has relied on Google Maps to get around New York City has likely come across the occasional hiccup. 

"Transit is something that has a lot of nuance to it," Hodge says. "When you're Apple or Google, you have to serve on a massive scale."

Hodge reckons that his company is equipped to handle local quirks. Members of Embark's team, for example, spend time on the ground figuring out things like how quickly people tend to walk in a given city. They'll test the app in the field and then tweak its results according to what they find. 

It's this attention to detail that enables third-party developers to craft solutions that avoid some of the flaws that sometimes mar Google Maps. The trade-off, of course, is that independent apps aren't likely to be as geographically comprehensive as Google's offering. The transition is going to be "like ripping off the Band-Aid" at first, Hodge admits, but he's confident that things will improve in time. 

After all, Apple is about to send a horde of new users toward apps such as Embark, UpNext Maps, HopStop, iTrans, CityTransit and the plethora of city-specific mass transit apps already in the iTunes Store. If nothing else, the influx of new users searching for transit directions will entice developers to expand existing offerings and build new applications to fill the gaps. 

E-wallets, or mobile wallets, offer convenience to mobile device users. Using on-screen barcodes (static or dynamic) or near-field communications (NFC) embedded in a properly equipped device, smartphone users can simply scan or tap their devices near a merchant’s reader to instantly purchase goods and services. E-wallets converge payment systems from cash, credit or debit to a single device that can also track and update a user’s finances on the fly.

Who Makes Money from E-Wallets?

Most of the controversy about mobile wallets centers, naturally, around money. Anyone who offers an e-wallet service for mobile devices is going to get a cut of an electronic transaction - much like credit card companies take a percentage of every sale made using their cards.

This is a big part of the reason why Google set up its Google Wallet service on the Android operating system in the first place. Well, that, and the chance to get a hold of some juicy customer data to feed its advertising business.

But the major U.S. cellular carriers are none too happy with Google’s plan. Already Verizon has blocked Google Wallet on its network, and now there are indications that Sprint may be planning to do the same. Instead, each carrier is opting to support its own payment service.

Steering Clear of a Political Fight

Perhaps that’s why Apple’s new Passbook service, highlighted yesterday at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, is more of an e-ticket and loyalty card organizer than a true e-wallet.

Not that this won’t be handy in its own right. The new feature, which will debut along with iOS 6 this fall, collects airline boarding passes, train tickets, store loyalty cards, coupons and movie tickets. It is also location-based, using so-called geo-fencing so that if you wander near a retail outlet where you participate in a loyalty program, the appropriate card will pop up on on your iPhone’s Lock screen.

Passbook will present static barcodes that merchants will scan to conduct transactions, so any newer service that uses dynamic barcodes will be beyond its reach. (Dynamic barcodes don’t require scanners, using animations that merchants read and validate on their own. Masabi’s mTicket system used in UK railroads are one such example.)

There will be no NFC transactions in Passbook, either - Apple has yet to put NFC into in any of its mobile devices. NFC is a power drain, and Apple is famously conservative when it comes to power demands on its devices.

What Comes After Passbook?

Ultimately, Passbook should be seen for what it really is: a transitional platform Apple is using to gingerly step into the e-wallet arena. In the long run, though, given Apple’s focus on revenue from iTunes, it’s hard to believe Apple will ignore transaction revenue forever.

If and when Apple does choose to move into iPhone-based transactions, the company will enjoy some tremendous advantages, including all that iTunes and App Store experience, not to mention credit card information for hundreds of millions of customers. Banks and credit card companies may be more eager to work with Apple than the carriers and Google, too, based on consumer surveys that peg Apple users as more well-heeled and willing to spend more on goods and services than the general population. 

A true mobile wallet offering from Apple would put tremendous pressure on Google’s e-wallet offering, as well as upcoming systems from Sprint and Verizon. (And in the long run, Passbook could be the beginning of an even more ambitous strategy to usurp the credit card companies. For more on this idea, see Apple's Opportunity: Disrupt the Credit Card Business.) Either way, Apple seems to be taking its time to get everything right for a too-big-to-fail effort.

My usage of Foursquare dropped off markedly over the past year. It was one of those apps that was addictive for a while, being the mayor of my local cafe and so forth, but then it just became a drag. That's because there weren't enough real world rewards for checking in - too few retailers offered incentives such as discounts. Today's redesign aims to entice people like me back to the service. Not to mention hook the many millions of mainstream users who haven't yet tried it. 

With this release, Foursquare becomes a direct competitor to the current recommendations leader, Yelp (whose tagline reads: "Real people. Real reviews"). This means that Foursquare will need to beef up its database of real world reviews, even though it will rely mostly on the implicit recommendations of check-ins. Foursquare is also aiming to beat Yelp on the social part, hence social functionality has been enhanced in the new version of Foursquare.

The Pivot

This is quite a change in the core use case for Foursquare. Previously, you opened up Foursquare to "check in" to a place. When I was a more regular user, I tended to use it in one of two ways: 1) to check into exotic locations when I was traveling, or 2) to keep my mayorship at my favorite local cafe. That check-in use case is still a big part of Foursquare, but it's been augmented with the "Explore" functionality. This enables you to search for something, like "sushi" or "cafe", and Foursquare will recommend places nearby.

The goal then of Foursquare has moved from checking in (where, as mentioned, the real world benefits turned out to be small), to discovery (where the benefits are potentially bigger, in that you could find great new places to visit).

More Social

The redesigned app feels more social. Comments are more to the fore now and you can see more check-ins when you visit a person's profile. You're also encouraged to "share your adventures", with the help of larger images and maps that display faces. The Facebook integration has been tightened: when you first open the new app, you're prompted to add Foursquare to your Facebook Timeline. Also your check-in history is more accessible now - you can now search through your check-in history, similar to how Timeline works in Facebook.

Overall, there are a lot of neat feature upgrades in the new Foursquare. There's less focus on the gimmicks (mayors, badges) and more focus on places, people and colorful images.

Another similarity to Facebook is Foursquare's renewed focus on brands. For example, the History Channel is on Foursquare and has so far recommended nearly 1,500 places with interesting histories.

Things To Improve On

It's not all beer and skittles. The user interface feels a bit crowded now and I got confused several times when tapping around the Explore section. So the design needs some work - especially to make it more intuitive to new users. But these things will get smoothed out over time.

Also if Foursquare wants to compete with Yelp, it needs to find a way to encourage more of its users to leave "tips" (aka reviews). Currently when you check in, you're asked "What are you up to?". That's a Twitter-like prompt, but really Foursquare needs to be asking something like: "What do you think of this place?". This would encourage more people to leave useful tips/reviews.

Will The Pivot Work?

Overall, this feels like a great move by Foursquare. The commercial aspects of check-ins didn't work out, but along the way Foursquare managed to amass a valuable store of data about places and where people go. Also, where they spend their money. So switching to recommendations, a la Yelp, is a smart move. That said, I think Foursquare needs more than just implicit check-in recommendations. It needs to increase its explicit recommendation database (= tips).

Will Foursquare be able to entice a mainstream market to "explore" the world using its app? Let us know in the comments.

Predicting a Post-App Economy

The mobile Post-App Economy would be fundamentally social, browser-based and content-driven. 

For now, we remain firmly entrenched in the era of the App Economy, dominated by native and hybrid offerings through the Apple App Store, Android Google Play, Windows Phone Marketplace and BlackBerry App World. But developers looking to circumvent the application store ecosystem are working toward a mobile Web-driven economy where the app stores are marginalized. In the short-term, look for the emergence of a dual economy combining the mobile Web and native app stores. The question is whether or not a true Post-App Economy driven by browsers and the social Web will ever fundamentally replace today's largely native landscape.

The App Economy - as seen through iOS and Android - is a content economy. The vast majority of popular apps are media content driven: In one way or another, content is driven through a service: Instagram (photos), Spotify/Pandora/Rdio (music streaming), Evernote (content storage), Zite/Flipboard (articles), Netflix/Hulu+ (video), Words With Friends/Angry Birds (games), Twitter/Facebook (content creation and sharing).

Within this economy, Facebook and Twitter are both apps and platforms, serving as a way to discover and disseminate content. The numbers tell the tale: As of December 2011, one in every five minutes spent on the Web was devoted to social-networking sites. Facebook accounts for one in every seven minutes spent online and three-quarters of all social-networking minutes. 64% of U.S. smartphone users accessed social networking from their phones, and two out of every five smartphone owners accessed social networking every day, according to comScore.

The Post-App Economy could be driven by social interaction and discovery through Facebook and Twitter to mobile Web. "With the rise in social media applications on mobile, we're seeing a shift beyond the single-purpose application back towards the mobile Web," said Crave Labs CEO Jeff Peden.

The Near Future: A Dual Economy

In the present, content and media are being created specifically for native platforms and pushed to the varying application stores. That includes pure native apps written in native code for iOS, Android and Windows Phone, along with hybrid apps built with Web tools like HTML5, CSS and Java and then "wrapped" to take advantage of native platforms. Either way, the destination is the app store, not the Web.

For a variety of reasons, this ecosystem is starting to fragment. Content publishers, retail businesses and restaurants are slowly realizing that they do not need to have a presence in the App Store to build a successful mobile presence. For many, it is much more important to show up in search on a smartphone or tablet through the browser rather than an app. Sure, there are native apps designed specifically for local discovery and content consumption, but search remains king in both of those realms. Even Apple's Siri delivers search results through the browser by accessing online databases like Yelp. Siri results are browser-driven, not delivered from native apps.

Over time, the mobile ecosystem will increasingly be split between games and utilities that function best on native platforms (Instagram or Infinity Blade, for instance) and more traditional content and local presences that use the mobile Web. While processor-heavy apps reliant on device APIs will be better written with native code, content-driven apps can be created more easily and "good enough" on the mobile Web.

"I think there is a start of a bifurcation of apps-versus-HTML5 mobile-optimized sites that began at the end of last year," said Carnet Williams, VP of Sprout at ad firm InMobi. "And [that] is evident along lines that I would describe as 'utilities and games' versus 'content.'"

The simple fact is that HTML5 and browser-based websites and services make much more sense for many content providers. For instance, look at the HTML5-driven websites for The Financial Times and BostonGlobe.com. These kinds of apps are cheaper and more convenient to develop, deploy and deliver all the essentials of a mobile content app. The same goes for sites and apps aimed at local businesses. Several companies have lined up to provide mobile-optimized site tools for small businesses, including DudaMobile and FiddleFly.

Williams sums up the Dual Economy nicely:

"I do not see the mobile Web becoming the predominant mobile content platform as much as an additional platform for native apps," Williams said. "The immense success of both Flipboard and Instagram are great examples. Flipboard removes content from the mobile and desktop Web and presents it in a readable format in a native application. Instagram didn't have a mobile Web app that replicated native functionality."

Will We Ever Reach a True Post-App Economy?

The simple answer is not anytime soon. This is not a matter of consumer preference or business logistics, the rise of the mobile social portal or maintaining search-optimized websites. It is a technological imperative.

The mobile browser is just not ready for a true Post-App Economy. When we talk about mobile Web apps, HTML5, CSS and the like, we are talking about the quality and capabilities of the mobile browser. Currently, none of the major mobile browser providers have the capability to serve top-notch, app-like experiences that serve all user expectations. Mozilla is probably the company working most directly on this problem, with its Boot2Gecko smartphone operating system. Direct access to the full capabilities of mobile devices is the primary issue, but not the only one. Others include rendering, graphics and load time (all basically in the same category), along with HTML5 audio and video quality. 

Facebook and Twitter want to give the ecosystem the tools it will need to create mobile Web presences that will benefit their platforms. Facebook has released a suite of tools called Ringmark to help mobile Web developers create browser-based apps that can be tied to the social network. While those tools are useful, and while social discovery is an important factor in creating a Post-App Economy, the mobile Web is still limited by the capabilities of the ecosystem reliant on HTML5 and mobile browser technology.

Users don't care whether they're using the mobile Web or native apps, they just head toward the best content and utilities. So the only way to fully disrupt the App Economy is to improve the capabilities of the mobile browser so it is more competitive with native apps. That's not likely to happen for at least two to four years. And even then it will take users several more years to fully change their conditioned behavior (downloading applications from app stores). And the native platforms aren't going to be stagnant during that time. 

The true "Post-App Economy" won't debut until 2020, if ever.

Top and bottom images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Google and Facebook are in a war for user attention on the Web. This is not just about how many eyeballs are on Google+ versus Facebook but also from an end-to-end platform perspective. That includes messaging, application deployment, social graph implementations and content discovery. Like everything else in the world of technology, this battle is going mobile. When it comes down to developing social mobile applications, Google may be doing better than many people think.

In Appcelerator and IDC's quarterly report on the trends of the mobile industry, 39% of developers answered that Google's total assets were more important to them than Facebook's social graph. Considering the huge lead that Facebook has in the social space, this is a bit of a coup for Google. What else are developers interested in at the start of 2012? HTML5 is on the rise, cloud services are hot and developer interest in Android is dwindling.

Google's Big Bite out of Facebook

Developer interest in Google's social properties actually has little to do with Google+, the search giant's erstwhile social platform. It really has to do with Google's network effects, the total assets that the company brings to the table in comparison to Facebook's social graph. When you think of it as an end-to-end platform, it makes a lot of sense. Google has search, YouTube, Gmail, Google Maps, Android Market, Google Play, Docs, AdMob and Google+. Facebook has the social graph and the Open Graph, a ton of user data, an advertising platform (except not for mobile) and 425 million mobile users.

34% of respondents said that they did not fully understand Facebook's mobile strategy, a damning response against the social platform that has not been fully addressed by the company as it prepares for its initial public offering. To be fair, 61% of developers still have more interest in Facebook social mobile apps than Google, but 90% of respondents said that was because of the platform's enormous installed user base.

"What they [Google] have done is explain the connections between different properties much better than Facebook has, that is really what our developers were circling around," said Appcelerator's principal mobile strategist Mike King, a former Gartner mobile analyst.

Fragmented Android Takes A Dip

Google and Android are activating more devices than ever before. So, how can Appcelerator see a dip in interest by developers creating apps for the platform? It is simple: they are sick of Android's fragmentation issues.

This is a matter of device and platform fragmentation, but also one of ecosystem. As an Android developer, ask yourself: how do you make money? You do not really have a single good answer for that question, do you? Is it advertising? Is it in-app purchases? Is it a little bit of all of the above? While Monty Brewster would be proud of you, it is a difficult way to go about running a business.

"They have been talking about doing it for a while but developers are getting a little tired of the story without anything delivered. What we see is just a slow chipping away of interest level on Android," King said. "It is fragmentation not just at the device level but also fragmentation of the marketplace and ecosystem. There is no single good way for an Android developer to make a lot of money. They have to pursue a lot of different strategies."

This does not bode well for Google chairman Eric Schmidt's prediction that developer interest in Android will eventually eclipse iOS in 2012. That is just not going to happen especially as actual smartphones running Android 4.0 are few and far between (no major carrier outside of Verizon sells an ICS device as of now). Developer interest in Android smartphones fell about 5% from Q4's survey.

We will see how this plays out. When tracking developer interests there are always a few fluctuations from quarter to quarter. Have developers found a comfort level with their Gingerbread implementations are and waiting for groundswell of ICS to develop to peak interest? That is going to take a while.

HTML5: Not Going Anywhere

Are app developers choosing to shun HTML5? Certainly not.

Appcelerator's data shows that many developers are looking to HTML5 for a good portion of their apps. About 79% of developers in the survey said that they plan to integrate some HTML5 into their mobile apps this year. Yet, these are not going to be pure-play HTML5 mobile Web apps. When asked what percentage of HTML5 code would end up in their apps, the average developer responded less than 50%. That means that the era of the hybrid app will only grow through 2012.

When King and I discussed the nature of HTML5 versus native development, we likened it to building a house. There are different tools for different tasks. Choosing where and when to deploy HTML5 is like picking a hammer or a screwdriver out of a toolbox. Sometimes it is the appropriate tool for the job, sometimes not. The survey noted that only 6% of developers will write their entire apps in HTML5 while 72% see some type of hybrid and 22% will go fully native.

"It really does point to this multi-architectural strategy and developers really seem to agree with that," King said. "It is a mobile platform-based approach. Picking a platform does not mean picking an architecture. So, you do not have to make a decision between HTML and native apps but rather is it a decision that every developer makes."

Hello: Cloud

Appcelerator acquired mobile cloud services platform Cocoafish in January and the survey results point to it being a good bet.

"60% of our developers said that they were very interested in using cloud services in their mobile applications and location and notification were the top two services that they were interested in integrating into their applications," King said. "That was just kind of a 'nice, we got that right,' moment for us."

That bodes well for the startup community working on "backend-as-a-service" platforms like StackMob, Parse and Kinvey. Appcelerator realized this when it went out and acquired Cocoafish and will make most of the platform's functionality available through various channels later in the year.

Maturation in Mobile: This Year's Big Trend

Mobile developers are on a roll these days. They finally fully understand the platforms, the options, the tools and the limitations of the mobile ecosystem. Developers are no longer in the "exploration" phase of mobile development and have moved to the "acceleration" phase. They expect to be developing multiple applications across several platforms and having their efforts rewarded.

We have seen a lot of corollary data that proves that point. For instance, January was one of the biggest months for downloads on iOS even after peak download rates during the holiday season. There are simply more smartphones and tablets in the hands of more consumers and mobile developers are learning to meet their demands.

A note on the Appcelerator/IDC results: 2,173 Appcelerator Titanium developers were surveyed from Jan. 25-27, 2012. Follow-up surveys were done with 484 respondents between Feb. 12-23. While Titanium developers are a particular subset of mobile app developers, the size of the survey and results are usually indicative of the ecosystem at large.

Portland-based startup Geoloqi thinks it can pull it off. The startup is aiming to give rich location data to enterprise and government customers through a release of a new SDK for Android and iOS an API. The idea is to turn complicated real-time location-aware data into a platform that developers can drop into any app.

Geoloqi's goal is to disrupt the first generation of location services, according to founder Amber Case. That means the Foursquares of the world are put on notice. The Geoloqi platform will provide cross-platform SDKs that are mobile carrier agnostic. It can track location in real-time and provide analytics on users and their location data and history. Enterprises, retailers and government agencies can create geo-fences, push messages and visitor metrics.

Right: Amber Case

The biggest innovation for Geoloqi may be its battery saving properties. Case said that in a couple instances the company wrote the code that connects a device its backend infrastructure was written in binary code to make it as lightweight as possible.

"Some of the systems that we have added to build or extend out the systems we have to actually make it work, in some of the cases we have actually written it down in binary so we can actually get a small enough packet size off the phone connecting to the server so we can reduce the battery life drain and have less connections. The server architecture, which is a custom-server architecture is scalable to our base," Case said.

After Geoloqi launched it rapidly found that its clientele was not going to be end-users and fellow mobile developers. Enterprises and government were the most interested parties because that is no easy system for creating location-aware real-time data.

"We are not selling an app, we are selling a platform system. So, if an enterprise or a retailer already has an app location, it just allows them to just plug it in and have location taken care of," Case said. "People really wanted to add these aspects to their apps and carriers understood that their existing enterprise and government customers were asking for something more real time and they were not able to provide it. So, they started calling us up and asking for a sort of hybrid solution so they could better serve their existing customers."

The dream of location-aware data is "The Starbuck Dilemma." In the Starbuck scenario, a user walks by one of the popular coffee houses and their device will recognize where it is and send a push-notification to the user. It is a mix of geo-fencing, push and real-time marketing that is delivered straight to the user's pocket. There is power in proximity marketing.

"The key story in this place is that I want to go by Starbucks and have a location-based message. That story has been there for 20 years but it is very difficult to implement," Case said.

As a platform, the intention is for customers to build on top of Geoloqi to provide the type of data location that the first generation providers cannot deliver. The next step is to provide analytics on top of that and enable enterprises targeted marketing like never before.

"We are really focusing on enterprise. This might be a silly analogy but what Salesforce did for CRM, making it really easy and painless for the enterprise, we want to do that for the enterprise for location and really make a bridge between that old guard of location services and real time, much higher functionality, much higher resolution location services," Case said.

Yes, a new laptop is stolen every minute, and about half of the smartphones out there don't have any protection whatsoever. So don't leave those laptops in your hotel rooms or your cars when you travel, people!

Imagine in the early 1990's when the Web was first starting to develop. Would you have thought that GPS technology would be available through the browser, in the palm of your hand? Imagine a restaurant having a mobile website with the ability to press a button for turn-by-turn directions to show patrons how to get there. The mix of real-time location and HTML5 on mobile devices could be one of the most exciting developments to come to the Web in years.

TeleNav is producing a browser-based, voiced-guided turn-by-turn GPS navigation service. For developers, it should be fairly easy to integrate into Web apps by dropping a line of code.

The browser-based service will work just like TeleNav's navigation application. It will have full-color moving maps, automatic re-routing and audio directions. It will work across all major mobile platforms.

Developers that are interested in the project can sign up here.

The TeleNav solution is a great example of how HTML5 is evolving. Device access, once only available to native apps, is creating an ecosystem where Web apps have the same functionality. Location-based services are one of the key features of mobile devices and TeleNav is producing a interesting way for developers, merchants and brands to tap into that function without going through and app store.

San Francisco-based Loc-Aid has a huge network and a vast array of partners. You probably have not heard of it. Part of that is because a lot of Loc-Aid's clients do not want you to know where they get their location data. Loc-Aid is now ready to step out of the shadows and become a go-to resource for developers looking to add location data to their mobile applications.

Loc-Aid calls itself location as a service. It sits between the cellular carriers and developers and aggregates location from one and pushes it through an API to the other. During an interview with CEO Rip Gerber recently, I drew a picture to help me understand exactly what Loc-Aid does. Bear with me, I am not exactly an artist.

That is the simple version. Here is the more complex version from Loc-Aid.

Essentially, Loc-Aid has a partnership with all the major North American carriers. Loc-Aid facilitates and aggregates location data and provides it to developers. This data can be used by financial institutions for fraud prevention, SMS marketing campaigns with geo-fence technology, machine-to-machine, business services and mobile marketing. Loc-Aid's customer base is heavily skewed towards the enterprise market right now, especially the financial sector. Without naming names, seven of the 10 largest banks use Loc-Aid in their mobile services and two of the four major credit card carriers.

Loc-Aid provides a single API from all the carrier networks with uncomplicated onboarding process, privacy certification and a reporting and optimization (read: analytics) for mobile developers to create maps, geo-fences and really anything that can be done with data. Loc-Aid is for developers that do not want to buy data directly from the carriers and also have an easy API to deal integrate.

Loc-Aid's clients use the service mostly for fraud prevention and authentication, verification and analytics. Surprisingly few actually integrate the service for gaming and social network, though Loc-Aid would like to increase the number of clients in that area.

Ever had your debit card declined while travelling because the bank thought you were someone else? Loc-Aid works with the banks to determine that you are you by putting the location of the card in the same proximity as a users phone. Every time the bank has to call you to make sure you are the one using the card, it costs them a substantial amount of money. Imagine how many of those calls you get a year and you can see why the banks would want to use Loc-Aid.

One interesting scenario is for sports betting in Nevada. The big casinos and sports betting companies are only allowed to take bets in Nevada. The casinos would get in big trouble with the Nevada gaming regulators if it was found they were taking bets from across state borders At the same time, the casinos also want a robust mobile component. So, Loc-Aid provides them with location as a service so that they can track where the bets are being made and make sure it fits within the rules.

Location Labs, based out of San Francisco, is probably Loc-Aid's biggest competitor. Skyhook Wireless out of Boston was on a track to be a major competitor in this space but after getting shutout of Android by Google, many of the largest OEMs have dropped Skyhook. The footprint of Loc-Aid is higher than any of those other services because it has partnerships with all the major carriers, giving it a network that encompasses nearly 290 million, or just about ever phone (smart or feature) in North America.

Developers: With location data and integration booming, does Loc-Aid work into your plans? Let us know in the comments.

"We think the next generation of smarter apps will be here in about the next 18 months," says Scott Kveton, CEO of Urban Airship.

For mobile developers, this news is very exciting. With over 400,000 iPhone applications now on the market, and some 200,000 on Android, developers are constantly challenged to maintain users' engagement. With push notifications, you can grab the user's attention briefly, but often, those messages are not welcome, especially if they interrupt other tasks.

With geo-fencing and geo-location technology, notifications in location-aware applications get smarter. Users will be able to get real-time alerts with information relevant to them exactly when they need it.

Specifically, explains Urban Airship via blog post, developers will have access to:

• All the data in SimpleGeo Context on an app by app basis (zip code, county, city, country, weather, state and federal political data)
• Enhanced Tag system by automatically tagging devices at the platform level with location information provided by SimpleGeo Context
• Added Boolean Tag functionality which lets you address you audience with complex AND, OR, and wildcard functionality
• Enhanced Urban Airship Reports over time to expose views of your audience by location when adding geographic context to our system

Not Just Location, but Context

But the system won't be just about you and your location, as many previous geo-fencing technologies have provided. It will also be about context.

What that means is that your mobile device will know not just where you are, but what time of day it is, what the weather's like, what's around you in the neighborhood and even more. Maybe it also knows about your past behavior, like you frequent this store or that restaurant. You order this beverage at that coffee shop. The bar you're walking towards is your friends' favorite. And so on.

If anything, the idea is very similar to what Google's chairman (then CEO) Eric Schmidt had in mind when he talked about the future of mobile search being serendipitous discovery of the world around you. "As I'm walking down the street in San Francisco I want my mobile device to tell me about the history here," said Schmidt last fall. "Think of it as a serendipity engine," he explained, referring to the future of Google search on mobile.

As it turns out, it looks like someone else (or rather, two someone elses) have beaten Google to punch - the combination of SimpleGeo and Urban Airship will implement that type of system, while Google tries to reinvent social over on Google+. How serendipitous indeed.

What makes this new, opt-in service unique is that the alerts are only sent to users' devices when they are near a participating store or brand.

These geo-targeted ads are made possible thanks to something called "geo-fencing" - an emerging technology which sets a virtual perimeter around a particular geographic region.

ShopAlerts, which launched last March from Placecast, announced a partnership with location provider Location Labs, in August. It uses Location Labs and services from other partners to locate the phones in the U.S. in order to send out alerts when creating campaigns for brands. When used by carriers like AT&T and O2, the carriers themselves provide the phones' locations. Placecast manages the creation of geofences in both cases, however.

Not Another Check-in App

The difference between ShopAlerts and so-called "checkin" apps like Foursquare and Shopkick, is that you don't have to launch an app on your smartphone and take any action in order to receive the coupons a retailer or brand wants you to see. Instead, you opt in one time - in this case, via AT&T's website - and then the coupons come directly to your phone when you're in the vicinity of a store offering the deal or discount.

While this sort of "set it and forget service" may not have the geek chic appeal of a location-based checkin app like Foursqure, it has a larger potential customer base - all phones that accept SMS text messages, not just phones capable of running apps.

Placecast's ShopAlerts service has previously powered campaigns for U.S. retailers American Eagle Outfitters and the North Face and it has licensed its technology to European carrier O2 in a deal similar to AT&T's. However, this is the first time a carrier in the U.S. has offered a large-scale geo-targeted service such as this.

According to AT&T's website, the carrier expects to add more brands in the coming months, but there's no word yet on how long before the service expands beyond the initial pilot cities.

But until now, these apps have been considered more hype than bite. A new study released today seems to state otherwise.

From location-based media company JiWire, there comes a new report focused on Wi-Fi use, location-based services and their associated trends. While this study looks at the data from the angle of the holiday shopper (obviously hoping for press coverage by those focused on holiday news stories), there are still some statistics worth mentioning from its findings.

We won't delve into all the details - you can read about the other data here - instead, we're just going to focus on what JiWire discovered regarding usage of check-in applications.

Is This a Surge in Mobile Check-ins, Bad Data or Something Else Entirely?

JiWire divvies up the "on-the-go audience" into some interesting segments. For example, it found that nearly half (49%) are open to checking-in to a location. That's a dramatically higher percentage than has been reported elsewhere, numerous times. (See: Pew Internet & American LIfe Project report, 11/2010, Myxer report, 9/2010, Harris Interactive study, 8/2010, Forrester report, 7/2010).

The difference here, apparently, is that JiWire looks at the "on-the-go" user while the others are looking at a larger slice of the mobile or Internet population. For what's it worth, JiWire defines the "on-the-go" user as someone either on a laptop, tablet (e.g. the iPad) or mobile phone (most likely a smartphone) and who's not at home or at their office. That is, the "on-the-go" user is someone who is truly "on-the-go."

But nearly half are checking-in?Either JiWire's findings speak to a dramatic shift in the "check-in" trend, the slice of the pie they're examining is more narrow and therefore more "checkin-friendly" or someone has their data wrong. We'll let you decide which it is.

The Findings: Why Checking In, Mobile Coupon Use

Regardless of your opinion on that, here's what they found:

?Among those who are doing so, 29% are looking for deals while 17% are just sharing their location.

Whether or not you buy the check-in usage data cited above, these details are relevant to note. Even if you think that this survey skews towards those mobile users who are more "early-adopter-ish" when it comes to mobile application use, there are still some general trends as to how those consumers are using these types of apps that are worth examining.

It seems that marketing drink coupons and free coffees to mobile users may not draw a crowd from all over town, but can help cement relationships with your core local customer base. Offers for entertainment-related discounts or retail purchases will have people traveling further, but maybe not as far as you would think.

What's the takeaway for this data, then? Maybe it's that location-based mobile couponing/discounts/deals is a much more personalized, hyper-locally targeted service than we realized. So many mobile coupon applications offer deals for a city, for example, buy not a neighborhood. That could be a mistake, as it turns out.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wouldn't give specific numbers on how many people were using Facebook Places as compared with its competition like Foursquare, Gowalla, SCVNGR and others. So you tell us: are using it as a consumer? Or if you're a developer, what your plans are to integrate it into your app?

Places is Big! (So Why Aren't My Friends Using It?)

The only think Zuckerberg would say about Facebook Places is this:

"We don't have any public stats, but it's going well...We know that Places on iPhone is multiples larger than any other location service. You can extrapolate from there. We're pretty psyched."

Given that all we hear about online these days is Foursquare, it seems, let's find out from our readers how many are really using Places. And by using, we don't mean you tried it once or twice. We mean it's your go-to service for checking in.

And from developers, we want to hear whether you plan to (or already have) integrated Facebook Places into your location-aware application, if relevant.

POLLS:

There are two polls below, one for users and one for developers. Developers who also regularly use these services can answer both polls, of course.

Consumers/Users: Do you use Facebook Places?

Developers: Will You Support Facebook Places?

With Sparkle, developers can do things like add geo-fencing to location-aware applications, or control the time of day an app can be used. It can even detect the motion and velocity of the handset.

Sprint has partnered with Location Labs to be the first to pre-install the new platform on its handsets. For now, the technology will be pre-loaded onto Sprint smartphones.

However, Sparkle isn't necessarily just for smartphones. Although it works on Android, RIM and iPhone for now, it can also work on Qualcomm's Brew Mobile platform as well, a platform often found on low-cost "feature" phones. It should be noted that on iPhone, all of Sparkle's features don't work due to Apple's controls - only the first two components in the list below will work on iPhone, location and geo-fencing.

Sparkle's Features

The Sparkle platform has three parts: a mobile client that runs in the background, a web and application API and pre-packaged consumer services.

For developers, the Sparkle platform offers four things:

1. On-Demand and Cloud-Based Location: The location part of the platform enables apps in genres like family finders, social gaming, fraud detection, phone detection, mobile marketing and more to locate a device.
2. Geofencing & Location Service: Geofencing allows developers to draw virtual boundaries around real-world locales. Developers could use Sparkle's geofences to automatically "check in" a user to a popular location-based service like Foursquare or Facebook Places, for example.
3. Controls for Data & Voice: The controls for data and voice can enable smarter, more controllable applications - something which could eventually enable I.T. lockdowns on app usage, perhaps, or more commonly, parental controls.
4. Velocity Determination: Sparkle knows when the phone is in motion. This could enable safety conscious apps that prohibit texting while driving, for example. Velocity awareness can also help make GPS-enabled apps smarter - like a check-in app will only operate when it sees you've stayed put for awhile at a particular venue, thus saving you on battery usage.

Sparkle-Enabled Apps

To demonstrate Sparkle's potential, Location Labs has been working with select mobile developers. Earlier, a Fourquare-focused app called MayorMaker was released using Sparkle technology and now a Twitter-based game called TweetMover is available too. In Tweetmover, Twitter users can unlock neighborhood-level badges as they move around town. (Hey, shouldn't Foursquare be doing this? Geofenced-enabled points and badges?)

But location-based services actually encompass a much larger market than check-ins, as a new venture from location provider Location Labs and fraud detection service Finsphere is now showing. They can be used to fight identity theft, too.

Location-Based Services + Credit Card Transaction Tracking = PinPoint

Today, the two companies officially announced the launch of Finsphere's PinPoint identity validation product, which helps to fight identity theft and validate a user's identity with the use of Location Labs' Universal Location Service.

The concept behind the service is simple: PinPoint tracks the location of a credit card transaction and matches it to the location of the end user's cell phone. If the two are far apart, it raises an alert.

The end user will then be sent a text message or email to verify whether or not the transaction was legitimate. Think of it as sort of a "first responder" to the possibility of a stolen wallet, stolen credit card or any other financially-bound identity theft.

Forget Apps, Just Sign Up Online

Because Location Labs already has relationships with all major U.S. carriers and can locate over 250 million mobile phones, it's now possible for the service to locate just about any mobile phone in the country, whether smartphone or feature phone - and without the need of an app download.

Instead, interested users can sign up online for the service (pricing available here) and choose from one of three plans: a free service associating one cell phone with one credit card, an "Advanced" plan for unlimited cards and three phones or the "Complete" plan which is the Advanced plan plus daily credit file monitoring (coming soon).

Developers Need to Think Bigger Than Apps

This launch proves the untapped potential for location services to expand far beyond mapping, navigation and check-ins.

Location Labs is one of the busiest companies in this arena today, enabling everything from the geofenced text messaging service ShopAlerts to the Foursquare-augmenting Mayor Maker, which introduced the checkout to complement the check-in. With Location Labs' new cross-carrier Universal Location Service, developers can build location-based services that work on every mobile phone in the U.S., not just on those phones where someone has downloaded a new app.

So to developers with big ideas, we challenge you now: think even bigger. If you want to build an app, sure, go for it. But maybe you should build an app as a value-add to a service, not as the entire service itself. The potential is out there, you just have to access it.

That said, developers, advertisers and marketers still need to be aware of the general trends in this area. These apps may be small now, but usage is growing. Foursquare, for example, has 3 million users who have checked in 185 million times as of September - an increase from only 40,000,000 check-ins in May.

Now is the time to experiment before these services hit the mainstream. Below are two new tools for doing just that.

For Developers: GeoIQ's Relaunch

Developer resource ProgrammableWeb this week announced the relaunch of the GeoIQ API (API or "application programming interface," is a tool for developers), which collects and displays location analytics data. The new platform called "Titanium+Geo" represents a partnership between Appcelerator and FortiusOne, the GeoIQ API provider. It's said to be the first location analytics platform of its kind.

Appcelerator is the maker of Titanium, an app-building platform for developers. The company currently supports over 72,000 developers and has 4,200 apps deployed on over 5 million devices. And when it wanted to add location-based analytics to its Titanium product, it turned to GeoIQ.

"Geo+Titanium" will now automatically create dashboards showing developers where, when and how their apps are being used along with meaningful statistics and metrics, explains GeoIQs Sean Gorman via company blog post.

It combines internal data (like coupons, customer databases and location information) with external data (like Twitter, demographics and competitive information) to create actionable data. This "actionable data" could be running a promotion, selling advertising or opening a new location.

Says ProgrammableWeb, "Titanium+Geo may be the first location analytics platform, but it certainly won't be the last," and they point to Appcelerator's recent mobile developer report which showed 42% of developers are now interested in geo-analytics. That's a niche that's begging to be filled with a wide range of competitors.

For Marketers: Leveraging Foursquare with FourScore

On the flip side of the location trend is the need to understand consumer adoption, specifically things like what do check-ins mean? What is their value? Do my business have a lot of check-ins? Should I even use location-based marketing? And so on.

Reported first by MobileMarketingWatch, a new service called FourScore may soon address these needs. (The service is now in beta). FourScore, which only works with Foursquare right now, will provides two measures of Foursquare activity:

1) Competitive Foursquare: This is a measurement of Mayorship turnover. For example, a score of 600 means a venue has 6 times the "Mayor" turnover of your competition. If zero, your venue has no mayor or no turnover at all.

2) Check-in Foursquare: This measurement is an index of how the volume of check-ins compares to others in your category. Again, a score of 600 here would mean you have 6 times the check-ins as your competition.

From the sounds of it, this tool will serve a real need for those struggling to understand the impact and worth of the check-ins their business receives.

This is Only the Beginning....

These tools may be the first of their kind, but this niche is about to explode - the same way location-based advertising seemingly "blew up overnight," as we reported earlier this month. Location-based advertising is now expected to be a $1.8 billion dollar industry by 2015. Don't wait until the last second to get it figured out - start testing out new tools like those above today.