Google Latitude and Geo Social Mobile App getting Traction

This week was really interesting for jTribe. The biggest impact on us was:

Google has released Latitude 

which lets you see your friends on a map

Google's Latitude shows your friends an a map and allows you to share your current location with friends. 

Not a completely new idea. There are many similar tools out there which want to achieve exactly that. In the US there is Loopt using basic mobile phones to determine a user's location and to share it. With the iPhone and Android device these apps popped up like mushrooms. jTribe alpha-tested a program on Android that allowed you to invite friends and show them on a map (pretty similar to Google Latitude). The app was based on some ideas wrote earlier about (becoming micro-social). We abandoned the app 2 month ago. The feedback from our Android users was not encouraging so we removed the app again. Maybe we should give the app another go now that Google is creating awareness. 

Thanks Google!

The Google Latitude announcement created some good hype around mobile Geo apps. We did notice a huge surge in the sales of our iPhone based applications. We moved from rank 200 into the top 20 paid apps category. Thanks Google! 

Growing Market for Mobile Geo Social Apps

I am very excited about what is coming next. Now that Google has created awareness for mobile geo social apps and people start to get more interested in those apps the market will grow. Analyst have predicted huge growth in this segment since years but I thinks it needed a leader like Google to kick-off that growth. (again, thanks Google!)