Local Quotables: Stangel, Biggs, Hyslop and More

The best words about and around the hyperlocal industry.

Luke Stangel thinks augmented reality development could mean huge things for hyperlocal; John Biggs blasts hot new app Highlight for sharing users’ information without permission; Kate Hyslop reinforces the importances of an online presence for local businesses; and more:

Luke Stangel, Tackable, March 7, 2012
Street Fight: ”I’ve seen a number of cool experiments where people display layers of local information using augmented reality. That said, the display can be a little hit and miss. It would be interesting if Apple took a crack at improving augmented reality. AR is here to stay, and I think we’re going to see a lot more AR in SoLoMo apps over the next five years.”

John Biggs, journo, March 5, 2012
TechCrunch: “However, when apps like this [Highlight] scrape contacts and then email or text them on my behalf, bad stuff can happen. People who wanted to remain hidden can be discovered, telemarketers gain a few hundred new targets, and trust is eroded. Worse, stuff like this makes me advertise junk in the name of virality.”

Kate Hyslop, BookingBug, March 7, 2012
Street Fight: “As connected devices move away from being purely the realm of early adopters to well and truly in the hands of the mainstream, a targeted and personalized online presence has become more relevant to local retailers than ever before — regardless of size, sector or location.”

David Brody, North Social, March 5, 2012
Mashable: “The ultimate goal of a running a promotion on Facebook is to inspire action — not squander away your valuable page traffic. But in order to inspire action — Likes, shares, engagement — you’ll need to first serve up a meaningful experience or offer up something of value.”

Kris Duggan, Badgeville, March 6, 2012
GigaOm: “The bigger idea [of gamification] is of a unified identity on whatever platform you’re on. Whether its web, mobile, a social app inside the enterprise, there is persistant idea of identity, rank and reputation that follows you.”

Lars Albright, SessionM, March 6, 2012
Forbes: “(Apps) are becoming a very competitive and crowded marketplace. Companies are trying to attract users. Building the app is the easiest part. Then you’ve got to spend to attract users. There’s huge user churn. They’re spending more and churn rates are as high as they’ve ever been. Where there’s opportunity is figuring out how can we solve some of those problems for developers? So that when they get users they can make them valuable users.”