location sharing
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Here integrates what3words’ super simple address system into its in-car API
Geocoding startup what3words — which chunks the world into 3mx3m squares, giving each a unique three-word label to simplify location sharing — has nabbed another in-vehicle integration, via a partnership with Here Technologies.
The pair said today that OEMs using Here’s navigation platform can include what3words as an in-car nav feature directly through the Here Search API, instead of needing to integrate itself. Existing users of the platform will be able to be given access to what3word’s addressing tech via an update.
Here says its map data services can be found in 150 million vehicles worldwide at this point.
It’s by no means the first such integration for what3words, which has found cars to be a natural fit for its simplified, “rolls-off-the-tongue” addressing system. The 2013-founded startup inked a partnership with Ford last year, for example. It also counts Daimler as an investor.
Letting drivers speak or type three words to input a location into their car’s GPS system has clear benefits versus requiring they correctly specify a full address. What3words also pinpoints a more specific location than a typical postcode — and works for destinations that don’t have a street address (the start of a hiking trail or specific lay-by; a particular entrance for a campus, etc).
What3words further notes that its tech has been adopted by global car companies, logistics providers and mobility apps, including Mercedes-Benz, Tata Motors, DB Schenker, Hermes and Cabify.
In recent years the novel addressing system has also found favor with Airbnb as a way of simplifying location sharing for less traditional types of stays.
Commenting on its latest partnership in a statement, what3words CEO and co-founder Chris Sheldrick, said: “We are seeing increasing demand from automakers and mobility services. Now that we are embedded in Here, we can enable our address system simply and easily in both new and legacy vehicles.”
“Automotive OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers can now provide the what3words service to their customers through the Here Search API instead of having to integrate it themselves,” added Jørgen Behrens, SVP and chief product officer at Here Technologies in another supporting statement. “This will allow drivers to navigate easily in dense, urban environments with non-standard addressing schemes or seamlessly get to any location, be it a local pub or a trailhead.”
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Facebook Messenger preps Auto Status location type sharing
Facebook Messenger could soon automatically tell your closest friends you’re at the gym, driving or in Tokyo. Messenger has been spotted prototyping a ported version of the Instagram close friends-only Threads app’s Auto Status option that launched in October.
The unreleased Messenger feature would use your location, accelerometer and battery life to determine what you’re up to and share it with a specific subset of your friends. But instead of sharing your exact coordinates, it overlays an emoji on your Messenger profile pic to indicate that you’re at the movies, biking, at the airport or charging your phone.
It’s unclear if or when Messenger might launch Auto Status. But if released, the feature could become Facebook’s version of the AOL Away Message, allowing people to stay in closer touch without the creepiness of exact location sharing. It might also help people coordinate online or offline meetups by revealing what friends are up to. Auto Status creates an ice breaker, so if it says a close friend is “at a cafe,” or “chilling,” you could ask to hang out.
Back in 2016, I wrote about how exact location sharing had failed to become mainstream because knowing where someone is doesn’t tell you their intention. What matters is whether they’re free to interact with you, which none of the social networks offered.
A few products, like Down To Lunch and Free, came and went in the meantime. Snapchat’s Snap Map and its acquisition of Zenly both doubled down on precise location sharing, yet still we’re often stuck home wondering if anyone we care about is similarly bored and might want to hang out.
Facebook has been experimenting in this space since at least early 2018, when its manual Emoji Status was spotted. That allowed you to append an emoji of your choosing to your Messenger profile pic. Then in October, Facebook introduced Auto Status, but only in the Instagram side-app Threads.
Some users were initially creeped out by the idea of Facebook relaying battery status. But Instagram director of Product Management Robby Stein explained to me that because you might not respond to a message if your phone goes dead or is left on the charger, it’s useful info to relay to friends who might be wondering what you’re doing.
Then earlier this month, reverse engineering master and constant TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong revealed a new, unreleased version of Emoji Status hidden in Messenger’s Android code. Then today, Wong showed off how she similarly spotted Facebook trying to port Auto Status to Messenger. That would bring the feature to more than one billion monthly users compared to the relatively small base for Threads.
With Auto Status, you can “Let specific friends see what you’re up to as you go about your day. Share location info, weather, and more, even when you’re not in the app.” Auto Status is only visible to a special list of friends you can change at any time, similar to Instagram Close Friends. And the feature shares “no addresses or place names. Just types of locations, like “at a cafe.” Movement (driving, biking, walking), venue (at the movies, airport), cities (in Tokyo) and battery status (low battery, charging) are some of categories of what Auto Status shares.
A Facebook Messenger communications representative confirmed to TechCrunch that the Auto Status feature was being prototyped by Messenger, noting that “We’re always exploring new features to improve your Messenger experience. This feature is still in early development and not externally testing.” The company also tweeted the statement.
One of the biggest unsolved problems in social networking and messaging remains knowing whether friends are free to chat or hang out without having to ask them directly. Reaching out at the wrong time only to be ignored or rejected can feel awkward or intimidating, and can discourage connection later. But if you have a vague idea of what a close friend is up to, you can more deftly plan when to message them, and be more likely to get to spend time together in person or just online.
That could be a cure to the loneliness that endless feed scrolling by ourselves can leave us feeling.
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Snapchat’s Zenly launches shelter-in-place leaderboard
Snapchat’s location-sharing app acquisition Zenly has gamified shelter-in-place during the COVID-19 outbreak. Today the app launched its Stay At Home challenge that shows a leaderboard of which friends have spent the most percentage of the last three days in their homes. Users can see who’s social distancing the best and share stickers of the scoreboard and coronavirus prevention tips to Snapchat, Instagram and other apps.
Location apps like Zenly that typically encourage users to go out and explore the world suddenly lost most of their purpose due to the widespread order for people to self-quarantine. They even might have incentivized people to disobey those orders. But by building a game around isolation, Zenly could make it cool to show off how you’re NOT grabbing coffee, visiting friends or taking a walk down Main Street.
Zenly’s CEO Antoine Martin announced the feature this morning, and credited a tweet I posted on March 15 calling for developers to build a gamified quarantine app as the inspiration. The quick work and rapid deployment was spearheaded by Danny Trinh, the renowned designer of Path who joined the company last year. TechCrunch broke the news back in June 2018 that Snapchat had acquired Zenly for $213 million plus retention bonuses.
@thek3vinkim @TurnerNovak @GillesPoupardin @LucasLambertini @nicolasfallourd for staying home!
And thanks @JoshConstine for the idea leading to this feature! pic.twitter.com/CEwrJiCFHd
— Antoine Martin (@an21m) March 24, 2020
Beyond Zenly’s version of “Pokemon No Go,” the app is also offering tips for containing coronavirus and a link to World Health Organization info. You can also attach a surgical mask to your profile pic to let your friends know you’re taking social distancing seriously.
What could really make a difference in convincing people to do their part to fight this worldwide pandemic, though, is Zenly’s coronavirus lens for its map that it released last week. It lets you look around the world and see the number of confirmed cases and recoveries in each country or state. Zenly updates the data three times per day based on the The John Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering. The map also overlays info from the WHO, the Netherlands’ BNO News, China’s DXY and this crowdsourced GitHub.
We’ve asked if there are any plans to launch similar features on Snap Map, which was inspired by Zenly. To date, Snapchat has mostly allowed its acquisition to operate independently from its existing headquarters in Paris.
“During these tough times, millions of people are turning to Zenly as a source of information and connection, so that they can feel close to friends and family even when social distancing is keeping them apart,” says Martin. “While spending too much time at home could be perceived as uncool, we wanted to flip the narrative to make it something that our community would be proud of and do our part in stopping the spread.” Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley told me his company was looking for a way to build its own quarantine gamification, and now has complimented Zenly on its execution, calling it “clever and awesome and beautiful.”
Knowing what’s happening around the globe might reinforce the gravity of our situation and that people can’t just go about their normal routine. We all have to battle this together, even if we’re stuck apart. Thanks to Zenly, social distancing just got a lot more social.
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Foursnap? Snapchat tries ‘Status’ location check-ins
Today’s teens missed the Foursquare era, so Snapchat is giving them another shot with a new feature to aid in-person meetups. Snapchat is now testing Status, an option to share to the Snap Map a Bitmoji depicting what you’re up to at a certain place. You could show your little avatar playing video games, watching TV, asking friends to hit you up and more. And Snapchat will compile these into a private diary of what you’ve been doing, called Passport
This fixes the biggest problem with Snap Map and many other location check-in apps. Just because someone is down the street doesn’t mean they want you to drop in on them. They could working, in a meeting or on a date. Snapchat Status lets people convey their activity and intention so you can tell the difference between “I’m nearby but stuck with my parents” and “I’m nearby and want to hang out!” As Snapchat refocuses on messaging after Instagram stole its Stories thunder, Status could ensure there’s more to see that makes Snap Map worth opening.
Snapchat Status and Passport were first spotted by reverse-engineering expert and frequent TechCrunch tipster Jane Manchun Wong. “Share the Moment with Status,” the introduction to the feature explains. “You can now share where you are or what you’re up to. Your Status will only be visible to friends you share your location with.” To see your status, you choose from reams of poses for your Bitmoji ranging from them reading a book to holding a sign saying “text me?”
Meanwhile, “Passport is Just For You: Passport helps you keep track of the Places you’ve been. Places you set your Status at will be added to your Passport along with who you were there with. Only you ca see your Passport, and you can delete a Place from your history at any time.” Your Status only lasts until you leave a place, but it’s tallied along with the number of countries and cities you’ve check into on your Passport.
A Snap spokesperson confirms that “Yes, we are currently testing new ways for Snapchatters to better communicate on the Snap Map with their friends. This test is running with a percentage of Snapchatters in Australia.” Previously, special Bitmoji were only displayed on the Snap Map involuntarily, like when you were road tripping or flying to a new place; visited somewhere special like a beach, mall or major event; or if there was a breaking news moment.
If you don’t want to use Status or even show up on Snap Map, you can go into ghost mode at any time, plus all your location-based content disappears if you don’t open the app for eight hours. And if you do want to be found, you can check who’s viewed your location or Status in case you need to know who’s blowing you off.
Snap launched Snap Map back in June 2017, basing the idea off its acquisition of French location startup Zenly that it bought for $213 million in cash plus bonuses. Beyond spurring real-world interaction, Snap has also made Snap Map an embeddable way to explore breaking news events or hotspots around the world. Status could provide structured data about your behavior, which could beef up Snapchat’s scrawny repository of ad-targeting information. The app could even try surfacing nearby businesses or discounts.
Snapchat’s tighter-knit social graph and stronger track record on privacy lets it offer features that would freak people out if built by Mark Zuckerberg. Given Facebook is aggressively cloning Snap’s whole product philosophy, from its direct copy of Stories to ephemeral messaging to its premium content hubs Watch and IGTV, Snapchat desperately needs to differentiate. Luckily, Facebook has failed to figure out offline meetups, and has yet to roll out the “Your Emoji” status feature that similarly tries to convey what you’re up to visually but within Messenger instead of a map.
Doubling down on Snap Map is a smart move because its one of the few areas where Facebook can’t follow.
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Snapchat launches less creepy Send and Request Location features
Snapchat is taking another shot at location after its always-on coordinate-broadcasting Snap Map proved a bit invasive for some users. Snapchat now lets you send your ongoing real-time location to a friend, or request theirs, which show up on the Snap Map and within your message thread.
Essentially, this is location sharing built for the intimacy people love about Snapchat, rather than the foreign and a little freaky idea of giving a wide swath of your contacts access to your whereabouts through Snap Map. As Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp ruthlessly exploit their clones of Stories, it’s the more private, close friends features like this and ephemeral messaging that are Snapchat’s best shot at staying relevant.
TechCrunch was tipped off to the location feature by our reader Chand Sethi (thanks!) and now Snapchat confirms it’s been slowly rolling out to iOS and Android users over the past few weeks. Snap Map, which launched last June, has always offered the option to only share with specific friends instead of all of them. Still, the whole idea of location broadcasting might have scared some users into staying in only-me Ghost Mode. This new feature is Snap’s chance to get them on board, one friend at a time.
Now when you long-press on a friend’s name or hit the three-line hamburger button on a chat thread, you’ll get the option to Send Location or Request Location. It only works with bi-directional friends, so you can’t ask for the spot of your favorite Snap star if they don’t follow you back, and you can turn off getting requests in your settings if people are spamming you.
Location shared through this feature will only update live for eight hours after you last open the app. You can cancel someone’s access at any time through the Snap Map. And if you’ve never enabled it, you’ll go through the location consent flow first.
By letting users dip their toes in, Snapchat could get more users active on Snap Map. After its June 2017 launch, it hit 35 million daily viewers, but that number was at 19 million and sinking by November, according to leaked data. In February, when it launched on web, Snapchat said it had 100 million monthly users — but as Snap never shares monthly user numbers and instead relies on daily counts, the fact that it had to go with a monthly stat here showed some insecurity about its popularity.
Along with Discover, Snap Map represent one of the app’s best differentiators. Investing in improvements here is wise. After all, it might only be a matter of time before we see an Insta Map.
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Snapchat launches location-sharing feature Snap Map
Snapchat’s next big feature wants to get you to meet up with friends in real life rather than just watching each other’s lives on your phones. Snap Map lets you share your current location, which appears to friends on a map and updates when you open Snapchat. It’s rolling out today to all iOS and Android users globally. Read More
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Google Maps will let you share your location with friends and family for a specific period of time
Google Maps has today announced a new feature to allow you to share your location with others. Now Google Maps will let you tell your friends where you are and give them directions to your location. It will also let you pick a special friend (like a family member, spouse or love interest, for example) to share your location with long-term. Read More
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Closely Is Another Way To Keep Tabs On Where Your Close Buddies Are At
A German startup that’s built a mobile location-based network for families, called Familonet, which includes an automatic location notification feature is launching a spin-off side project app targeting small groups of friends or co-workers who might find it similarly useful to be automatically informed of each others’ whereabouts. The new app, currently in beta on Google Play,… Read More
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Location Sharing Startup Glympse Raises $12M As It Looks For More Device Integration
Glympse, a location sharing platform that has integrated its real-time mapping and tracking service into messaging apps, cars, wearables and other services, is today announcing a financing round of $12 million. CEO and co-founder Bryan Trussel tells me the company will use the money mainly to staff up the business to deal with the interest it’s been getting from outside companies for… Read More
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