While staying up all-night in your mom’s basement, battling magical orcs and pounding Cheetos sounds awesome to some people:
most of us would rather meet up with friends and do fun stuff in the real-world. Virtual worlds are dying. Instead, we use status updates and check-ins to show off how awesome our first lives are:
Our yacht is incredible! Has its own pool, hot tub, movie theatre, recording studio, spa/massage room, gym, (cont) http://tl.gd/2jgpcs
Paris Hilton
ParisHilton
Mobile, social, real-world games (like Foursquare, Gowalla and MyTown) haven’t hit the mainstream because the “games” aren’t all that fun and the right incentives aren’t there. In other words, a mayorship and 10% off my next slurpee ain’t gonna cut it. I want a game with rewards like the NYC Key to the City project, which:
…invests regular New Yorkers or anyone else who happens by with the powers of magnanimity usually reserved for the city’s highest officeholder: to bestow a key to New York on a person of their choice, granting extraordinary access to generally off-limits parts of a no-entry-to-unauthorized-personnel kind of city….
The key… opens locks at two dozen locations in the five boroughs, from the baptistry at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan to a locker at Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn to a very private and humble room (no spoilers) at the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens.
This is so awesome. I imagine an augmented reality future where life is a game, the world is your board, and the points you accumulate for having fun can be redeemed for new experiences. I’m thinking a mobile web powered version of The Game.
Gaurav Mishra and I have recently been discussing these concepts and came up with an idea he coined as gttgthr.com (Get Togther). He does a better job then I can of explaining it:
Step 1: You sign up using your Facebook ID and indicate your interest in joining different types of get-togethers: meet up for coffee, watch a movie, listen to live music, go shopping, learn how to dance etc.
Step 2: You browse through a list of awesome things to do in the city around your interests. Like Thrillist.
Step 3: You indicate that you will attend a proposed get-together, or suggest a venue for a proposed get-together, or propose a new get-together. Like Plancast.
Step 4: The system will connect you with [friends and] friends-of-friends who have also expressed an interest in attending similar get-togethers. Like Thread.
Step 5: Once a group has decided to attend a get together, they might get a surprise group deal offer from the venue. Like Living Social.
Step 6: Users can be designated hosts for venues, activities, or even cities. Like Foursquare.
After some debate we both felt that although this app had all the overhyped elements of group purchasing, game mechanics and FB/Foursquare APIs, it wasn’t “the one.”
What do you think? How can we leverage the mobile web to create fun, real world experiences? Do you know of other companies like SCVNGR and Geocaching doing cool stuff in this space?
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Time. There is no app mentioned above to help manage and organize time. There is a difference between saying, “I want to see a movie this week” and “I want to see a movie tonight” and “I want to see a movie right now.” Some kind of dynamic calendar app would be good.
Scope and flexibility. Allow for people to create non-specific events or 'get-together.' For instance, “looking to do exercise three times this week, any days but from 6-8pm.” Then the app can find people who are doing some kind of exercise but it might be three different people or whatever. So day 1 could be frisbee, day 2 could be jogging, day 3 could be someone looking for a lifting partner… whatever. Another example would be, “I want to be entertained on Friday night around 9pm, my budget is X amount.” Then the app could find an off broadway show that is having a groupon deal or it could point out that that date is the first Friday of the month and MOMA has free entrance.
Spam blocker. I don't want business to be all about trying to get me to 'get-together' at their establishment unless they truely have a special deal. I know every bar in the city has a happy hour from 5-7, I don't need thrillist or what-have-you to send me an email pointing out the obvious.
hey dan, thanks for the comment, i think this is a really cool idea. generally the products ive seen be successful are those who do one thing and do them really really well. my inner product manager is telling me that we would have to cut what you are describing down to a single core idea. for instance your idea focused solely on entertainment is very cool: “I want to be entertained on Friday night around 9pm, my budget is X amount.” Then the app could find an off broadway show that is having a groupon deal or it could point out that that date is the first Friday of the month and MOMA has free entrance.” i like it, you should do it
Isn't steps 1,2 and 3 = meetup.com ?
They've found it hard to monetize.
Meetup also shows the problem with steps 5 and 6. Getting folks who will organize the get togethers and events is pretty hard. Most meetup groups die after 1-2 get togethers.
Grouping ideas work only if they have a viable option of making money attached to it. Thats why Groupon is a success. And Ning had to get rid of their free plans.
So if you combine your 6 steps with a payment gateway idea like eventbrite.com or maybe even wepay.com – then it could get exciting. Otherwise, I don't see the incentives from end-user point of view.
So it could be a website where people come together to organize an event. They earn points based on the effort they put in to the event. The event has to make money. And this money is distributed based on the points earned. (The idea has some wrinkles of leadership. And accountability – who assigns the points for tasks done? And “too many cooks spoiling the broth” phenomenon. But I don't think these are insurmountable problems and should be solvable by someone smart and motivated to build such an idea.)
hey dan, thanks for the comment, i think this is a really cool idea. generally the products ive seen be successful are those who do one thing and do them really really well. my inner product manager is telling me that we would have to cut what you are describing down to a single core idea. for instance your idea focused solely on entertainment is very cool: “I want to be entertained on Friday night around 9pm, my budget is X amount.” Then the app could find an off broadway show that is having a groupon deal or it could point out that that date is the first Friday of the month and MOMA has free entrance.” i like it, you should do it
hi Ankesh,
Thanks for your comment. The differences between the steps 1-3 above and meetup is the focus. From what I've seen meetup wants to create communities, typically in a drinks/classroom type setting. gttgthr would encourage new relationships through a one off or set of closely related activities. Not just sitting and talking but actually doing something.
Certainly getting the venues to offer discounts would require strong local sales forces which has been very tough to do (Yelp is a notable exception).
As your correctly mentioned I think the site would be closer to eventbrite then meetup. In the end, as you correctly mentioned, the site would be difficult to monetize and exploring the friend of friend relationships is still too creepy for most people.
I like the idea that you have around creating monetizable events, though that takes some of the fun out of it.
Thanks again
I am getting my Perl together to do some regular expressions. Then I’ll learn statistical analysis and generate some algorithms. I’ll collaborate with a web guy to get users to input data from their browsers and a DB person to organize and store it. Then after all that hard work we will have solved the problem of boredom that plagues so many city dwellers….
I like craigslist- can’t we just tap into that somehow?