AT&T Makes Moves For Hyperlocal Checkmate
You know you’ve got trouble when a giant mobile service provider jumps into the hyperlocal social search game. I could not believe it when I learned today that AT&T has launched a competitor to Yelp.
This is huge and Buzz.com is going to be a game changer if not checkmate for many existing social local platforms.
Think about it, not only does AT&T now control the platform, the interface and content they also have all of their users at the end of the line ready and hungry to participate in mobile hyperlocal search and networking.
Although AT&T might not be the company to be able to pull this off they have the right idea which is to move the group not the individual. On top of this they are monetized, unlike Yelp who exist upon the good will of their users interest.
The only next logical step would be if Apple iPhone launched it’s own local social community app. Maybe they already have or will?
The race to monetize hyperlocal involves building an audience. If the audience already exists and you automatically plob them into a social search platform with hyperlocal capacity you just leap frogged what many companies are working so hard to do, which is simply to gain exposure.
Even if Yelp has been growing into the range of 26 million online users it still has to compete with the likes of a company that claims more than 230 million users in 96 cities. The other part of that equation is that those 230 million people actually pay a bill each month and I am sure more and more do so online.
Is the picture getting clearer?
Just add water and stir for your instant hyperlocal network.
When Google is saying that mobile browsers will soon dwarf their online users you can only start to see part of the big picture where things are going. Maybe Google will still buy Yelp and then mix it with Android?
One thing is for sure, The hyperlocal future is mobile.
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