As bustling mega-cities and entire countries all over the world slowly begin to stop moving and start to slow down. It has been fascinating to observe how many of the companies that usually help the city to move around, have suddenly come together in solidarity to help people to stay at home and the cities to stay still. While it is frightening to think about how much data these companies collect and analyze on a daily basis, it is at times like these where we start to see how beneficial this data can be to helping society function in difficult and unusual times.
Citymapper is one of these companies, a public transport and mapping startup. The app usually helps commuters decide which entrance of the underground will make their route most efficient and is now focusing on “gamifying” the quarantine by building a leaderboard of the cities that are moving the least compared to their average.
Zenly, a light-hearted location tracking app to help teens find their friends around the city, made a similar effort. The app, which was acquired by Snap Inc. a couple of years ago has created a leaderboard system to allow friends to compete on how large of a portion of their daily lives they are spending at home. They are also showing how effective quarantine has been in every city around the world by using robust historical data.
It is incredible to see so many fantastic tech startups ranging from the small to the large coming together to help the world get through this challenging period by working swiftly on new and exciting data visualizations of gamification mechanics. It is going to take innovation and ingenuity to make sure the world changes its attitude and takes the quarantine more seriously.
It could be said that many of these startups are only in it for the marketing boost, and to a certain extent, this is probably true. However, what I think is most important is that this is happening at all. These startups will ultimately fail if they don’t find a way to keep up engagement during these truly testing times and if that means adapting to the situation at hand and sharing a unique perspective with proprietary data we welcome it with open arms.
If everyone does their part, stays at home and continues to do their best to help the world keep functioning, we can make sure this period lasts as little as possible. In so doing, we can ensure that all these great startups survive this terrible period and come out on the other side bigger, better and more resilient.
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