The latest Myxer BoomBox report on location-based social networks found that only 11% of respondents claim to use location-based services, with leading services differing greatly from those that get the most publicity.
According to Myxer's BoomBox 'check-in' report, of the 11% of respondents that do use location-based services, consumers heavily favored Booyah's' MyTown, which claimed 56% of those polled, while Loopt came in second place at 12%. Surprisingly, two of the more 'popular' services, Gowalla and Foursquare, trailed far behind MyTown, only capturing 8% percent each.
The study also revealed some surprising trends as they relate to
preferences by those who use these services. 77% of respondents said
they check into their network at home, more often than checking in from
other venues.
For those who don't use the services, only 14% claimed privacy as the reason, while 56% claimed lack of interest, and nearly a quarter (23%) reported that their phone doesn't have the capability.
Of the 11% who reported using these networks, they appear to be increasingly active, with 73% citing an increase in their use of these services and only 27% reporting a decrease. And in terms of frequency, 31% said they check in at least once a day, and 26% said they check-in every hour, giving hope to a potential of high-engagement from a marketing perspective.
Additionally, among those polled who do use location-based social networks, 55% said that they have used location based social networks to attend a venue. Of those who attended venues using LBS, music events were most popular at 36%, followed by restaurants at 28% and bar/clubs at 19%.
"Our check-in report demonstrates that location-based social networks are growing but not mainstream yet," said Myk Willis, CEO of Myxer. "Suprisingly Booyah's MyTown seems to have the early lead in the space and most consumers check-in at home. We believe the success of such services hinges on the passive gaming element which may supercede true online-to-offline event discovery."
Since 2005, Myxer has cataloged various data points: age, gender, geographic location, phone model, manufacturer, carrier, as well as the operating system of each handset that initiated a download from its delivery platform that now supports more than seven million monthly unique visitors downloading over 80 million content items from Myxer each month. For this month's report, Myxer used PollDaddy, an online polling and survey tool, which gathered responses from more than 1,500 Myxer users.