According to Forrester, only 6 percent of U.S. online adults use geolocation apps, a very small growth from 4 percent in 2010. Of that group of geosocial smartphone users, only 2 percent say they use the apps once a week or more.
“The bottom line is that geosocial apps are still niche, but they’re growing in usage. Since we published our previous report in July 2010, foursquare has grown from 2 million users to 15 million,” writes Melissa Parrish, the Forrester analyst. “Twitter — and now even more aggressively, Facebook — has continued to fuse their social offerings with location information; even technology companies like Apple are chiming in with the launch of the “Find My Friends” app. However, even though the user-base numbers have grown quickly, we still find that few consumers are checking in: 6 percent have ever, with only 2 percent doing so at least weekly.”
While adoptions has been slow, the category’s early adopters are young and influential (75 percent of geolocation app users are between the ages of 23 and 45) and are twice as likely to share product information, and also promotional coupons, discount codes, or the results of a game they’ve played. The percentage of female geosocial app users also climbed from 22 percent in 2010 to 37 percent in 2011.
16 percent of online adults in the U.S. were familiar with geolocation apps in 2010 but that has nearly doubled to 30 percent in 2011, which stands to grow more as Facebook, Apple, and Google invest more in the important advertising category.
“The important thing for marketers to note is that there’s a ton of marketing potential within geosocial apps,” added Parrish. “These services allow marketers to know when their consumers are in or near their retail locations, and to deliver them relevant information that can help with everything from branding to driving in-store foot traffic.”
Source: AdWeek.com
