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Thursday 18 November 2010

The future of local trade = Facebook + Yelp Foursquare + General

Editor's note: the following guest post is by David Marcus, founder and CEO of Zong, a provider of funds hundreds of major mobile applications and destination sites and Facebook, AT & T mobile payment

It has been much hype, mad assessments and comprehensive market enthusiasm on companies who promise to release the power of the social graph, location, recommendations and group purchasing.Most recent evaluation of Facebook according to SecondMarket is now about $30 billion, while still at a stage of young, Yelp, sell for $550 million to Google, fired over 25 million to evaluation disclosed but very high, and finally General raised $135 million to $ 1.35 billion exorbitant sum evaluation Foursquare has raised $20 million to a post-money 115 million dollars.donc outside of their huge success with the community of investors and their users evaluation, that these companies have in common, and what does all this have to do with the disrupt local trade?

In an August TechCrunch guest post, Alex Rampell describes how trade Online2Offline is an opportunity of dollar potential trillion. The bottom line is that we spend most of our income available offline, in the shops, restaurants and shopping malls. But companies such as General, debt of State and other startups selling buying groups and private changing the flow of money.Buy online people and buy out connexion.Mais is only the beginning of a brewing storm that will change the way which discover us, shop and pay for things. Let's focus on the main function of each of these different started providing to understand how bringing them together will be ultimately disrupt several trillion dollars industries:

Facebook: provides the social graph, which is becoming a utility.Thanks to its open platform and API, we share more on our lives and in our interactions online and on mobile day.Foursquare and Gowalla: provide localization services and checkins, accompanied by mechanical game that motivate users to unlock the badges, earn some mayoralties and get discounts at stores in the process.Yelp: provides assessments of the crowdsourced business locales.Maintenant also provides check-ins and offers.groupon: provides offers discounts on a promise to increase sales and attract new customers with local businesses.

The interesting thing here is that there is much overlap in the functionality offered by these companies. Recently, Facebook has launched sites, mobile geolocation service that mimics Foursquare local check-insurance Yelp also added checkins and implemented recently to Japper Deals, a General clone.

Considering that local trade will be especially mobile, one of these companies still must meet all of these features with a simple click payments (IMHO), really tap into the potential of these revolutionary technologies. In my mind, the ultimate product combines all these features in a mobile application. A user can launch the application, see what special contracts are in the region (location + group purchasing), which his friends already purchased coupon/article (social graph), local reviews of friends (social graph + reviews), and then she could buy coupon wished in her apparatus clicking.She could walk in local businesses with a code reduction, code bar, or perhaps at some point in the future, enabled RFID label and cash that she had to buy.

All these companies, with the exception of Yelp, are at an early stage of their development in this area.Places of Facebook is absent of Foursquare, game mechanics reviews of Yelp, and local deals General.Carrément is missing scale in its offer of discounts.Yelp is missing the social scope of the chart and integrated payments.General is missing from the main functions of social graph that give better relevance by social shopping.

So, which one of these companies succeed in releasing the power of the local business by combining the good set of features in the appropriate field sales force? it's my bet on Facebook to be the premier.Ils have large advertising sales organization that could affect local companies, are already supposed to be offers on-site tests they are in fact more distribution and social graph access no matter which of the other companies, and finally they built a true payments platform.

General and Yelp also have a decent shot, but it will be difficult to compete with distribution channels and the ubiquity of Facebook.afin remain relevant, they will have to innovate and to propose originales.Du block future features will likely be more difficult with players enter their space, but it could end up being purchased (once again for the founder Dennis Crowley) by Google, which is poised to aggressively go after the possibility of local trade.


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