The Problem with Location Based Social Networks

For the past 2 years, I worked on TapTag which at its core was a location-based social network. It’s an idea that has had countless permutations created before and there will be many more. It’s enticing and can be applied to a lot of different potential markets and interests. They usually combine some format of user content with a geographic location for a specific reason but there have been very few successful attempts.

Here I wanted to share some of the problems I found in my own exploration of this well-trodden path.

No content nearby?

If you’re intending to show nearby content to your users it’s the first problem you‘ll face. Your product needs to provide value to your users on their first use even when there’s nothing nearby. How you tackle this problem can lead you down very different paths.

Apps like Whisper have made nearby content an added feature while displaying popular content so no user is left with a blank state.

While others like Yik Yak have focused on specific locations and building their user base in those locations. We also found success with this method by building content in specific cities and users were more engaged. But this has a higher cost for growing users when compared to traditional social networks.

Slow content growth

With traditional networks, you’re only limited by shared interests. Once you have content in a particular interest it can appeal to all users who share that interest. In location-based networks, there’s the added layer of interesting content needing to be near a user to be relevant.

In traditional networks, friends’ posts are relevant whether you see that friend every day or they live on the other side of the world. With influencer-lead networks like Twitter, those influencers attract their fans by simply being there.

The added location layer mean you don’t just need content that interests your users but content that interests them AND is nearby. Which makes the task of seeding your network with content more difficult and you’ll be limited to slow content growth in most regions. This decreases the likelihood of a user bringing in new users who aren’t in one of your populated areas. And even if they did it’s hard to keep them without relevant nearby content.

Low frequency of posts

By its nature users will have a lower frequency of posts than other types of social networks. People tend to only post in a location they consider interesting and if you’re hoping to collect local knowledge that’s a problem. When you live somewhere for long enough it becomes mundane and users will tend to mostly share when they visit new places which isn’t a frequent occurrence for most people.

Foursquare got around this problem through gamification which encouraged users to check-in to compete with others. You must have a solution to increase the frequency of posts.

The End

Hopefully, this provides some useful information for the next person attempting this. There’s a lot of challenges but at scale, there could be some interesting uses for location-based networks.