I have seen the future of location-based apps, thanks to Tungle
I’ve been pretty vocal about how I’m down on Foursquare. Not their business model or potential, but how I’m personally struggling with Foursquare’s relevance in MY life. At the very least its pointed out to me how much cooler my friends’ lives seem to be.
And I’ve been equally vocal about my current WeRewards obsession (go ahead and sign up and see what I mean, and yes I’m pimping the referral program, guilty). I’ve made over $10 from using it so far. I love it and if you’re interested in them, check out the podcast we did with their CEO, Ted Murphy.
Last week Stacy and I recorded a DIG:this podcast with Tungle CEO, Marc Gingras. I’ve blogged about Tungle, along with some other apps/sites I am playing with, but essentially its a social calendar service. I love it.
The podcast should be up soon, maybe next week, and I expected to hear about Marc’s entrepreneurial past and about Tungle’s startup story. What I didn’t expect is to uncover a glimpse of the future of location-based apps.
I don’t want to give too much away because hey, I want you to listen to the podcast, but since its not up yet and I’m excited about this, I’ll start the conversation.
Marc pointed out that if you think about it, your true social network, your true friends, the people that you actually want to connect with, can most likely be found in your calendar. These are people you are actually meeting with. Novel idea, huh. Your calendar is a rich source of your likes (where you eat, what you do), your friends and contacts (your real ones, not your phony/fake ones), and your future (where you’ll be and what you’ll be doing).
I’ve had a nagging problem with the current batch of check-in apps in that it only tells me where people are right now, not where they will be. Most of the time it does me no good to find out where my friends were. It’s a novelty to see that Josh went to Chick-fil-A for the 41st time this week, but I couldn’t really ever meet him there because I can’t be ready to go at a moment’s notice.
But, if his calendar was somehow attached to his social presence, I might have known that he was going to Chick-fil-A. The connection of your calendar to your check-in activity holds a massive amount of rich data. We’re just beginning to see how mobile can be relevant in people’s lives by messaging them when they are checking-in at places. But imagine if we know where people are going, what they’ll be doing and who they’ll be doing it with… (and no I don’t mean this, sickos).
I’ll stop there and see if any of you want to continue that thought. I have my ideas but I’d rather hear what other people think of the potential of unlocking someone’s calendar and making that part of their social graph.
Now this might get me checking in again…I think it would be really neat if they partnered with someone like Groupon. So if my Tungle calendar said I was going to a certain concert Friday – it would say if I got 4 more people to buy tickets through Tungle I would get my ticket for half off or something.
Oh that's a great idea, Groupon + social calendar + check-in.
I'd like to see a Google Calendar/Tungle and Plancast integration. i.e. click a “Share to Plancast” button in Tungle.
Hm, @mgingras, isn't there already Plancast integration? And any plans for Google Cal integration (or is there one already)?
There is, but it is Tungle in Plancast. It won't be too long where you will see it the other way around.
I was just thinking about something like this yesterday. Since writing a plugin for OpenVBX that uses the FourSquare API I've been thinking about about ways that “social” platforms could actually improve your life.
I wrote about it on https://tumblr.gleep.org/
There's a calendar feed on the front page when you log in that you could subscribe to in gCal.
I've always thought the iCal and GeoRSS formats were a perfect fit. I've also wished google calendar had google maps view of my calendar.
And now? I want my android device to look at my calendar and start the navigation app without prompting based on where I am, traffic conditions and my early arrival settings.
We're social now? Awesome! Carpooling can be presented as an opportunity!
You seen Neer and Waze?
https://www.waze.com/homepage/
https://www.neerlife.com/
What happens when aggregate calendar data is combined with historical and realtime traffic data? For traffic prediction, and warnings that two events are too close in time and too far apart based on projected traffic.
Then we make friends with fedex and ups and they know we're not home when they need to deliver a package.
It's really all about mastering Time and Space!
And wouldn't brands and retailers love to know this information — now they could ultra-tailor their offers. Tungle could also be a great front-end engine to help retailers accommodate consumers' advance-order needs by integrating with shopping list apps, as well as Groupon, as others have suggested here.
Socializing and calendaring should come together. I like very much the neat solution by NeatCall https://www.neatcall.com/ they provide innovative mobile scheduling approach for all kind of mobile phones. Neatcall and Tungle could come together with a perfect solution
Neatcall looks really interesting, have you used it as a mobile scheduling app yet? Love to hear how that worked…
Very well put. I actually have tried Waze, very intrigued by the idea, but it can't find my business address in midtown so I'm having trouble testing it out. Have you been able to play with it? Love the idea…
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Have you seen GeoKnot? checkout http://www.geodexia.com
I love that app.
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