

Google Latitude on iPhone became a competitor of my app, what should I do? - angkec

We were terrified when we saw Google's latitude on the iPhone was released today. It went head on with our product that has been in the App Store for 4 month!<p>My app is called Tracku: http://www.trackuapp.com. Basically we have all the feature the Latitude has now with a few extras like send message within the app as well as share map pins. But I am worried that Google might start to catch up, adding more features and will drive my app out of business.<p>What should I do? Would appreciate any suggestions.
======
revorad
+Make the landing page nicer. Add a better one-liner which tells people
exactly what your app does.

+Make it more personal. Be super nice to your users. Do awesome things that
don't scale.

\+ Start a competition, make a game out of your existing user actions. A
Christmas treasure hunt?

+Add user-created map layers building virtual worlds on top of the real world.

STOP thinking about Google. Just do your thing and be so good they can't
ignore you.

------
onan_barbarian
You were already competing with a handful of other startups in this space,
including the YC-funded Whereoscope.

Genuine question: how much business were you doing before that you're worried
about losing it? You wouldn't be the first company to get steamrollered by
some random Google/Apple/... side project.

------
sgns
Having seen your landing page and the video, this about the app:

\- I liked the simplicity and the concept of the app a lot.

\- Does the msging in any way interact with sending SMSs/IMs?

\- It's a great idea to be able to message your sharing friends, but what's
the quickest way to reach your friend after you receive a pin from them? Think
through the usage scenarios - and flaunt them! "It [the whole scenario] just
works" is your best friend.

\- Ask your non-techie users/friends about the scenarios and make sure you
listen a lot.

The landing page:

\- show don't tell. More pictures less txt... (take a leaf from the big A).

\- I wouldn't use the word "setup" at all, when you've basically intelligently
managed to rid your users of that chore. That's something to flaunt, whereas
the very word setup IMO is a turn-off. Just go with "no sign-up"/etc.

\- The first paragraph to me looked like filler even if it may be good and
true. It would be more appealing to me to directly explain concrete cases
where the app can achieve the good things you speak of. (I hope you've watched
the FaceTime commercial a lot lately)

\- The video is a great beginning, but turn up the voice/eq it (I had some
trouble hearing it), and turn down the music a bit?

\- Make sure you ask non-techies how it resonates with them. Listen carefully.

\- The same operation on your iTunes page, and make sure the screenshots are
of very self-explanatory usage cases.

------
magicseth
The best thing to do is to keep innovating. I assume you are not as large as
Google, and therefore have the ability to move faster.

Think about what your assumptions are about what your software can and should
do. List them out, and really critically re-evaluate them. I am certain you
can come up with something everyone in this game is taking for granted, flip a
bit, and outdo the competition.

For example rethink the concept of sharing your location _NOW_. What happens
if your app instead tracks you over time, creating a heat map of your
territories/areas, and can predict where you will be going based on past
trends. Now you are doing something even more interesting with a much larger
market. Involve the user in predicting/changing the location behavior and you
may find a much larger audience than you were ever expecting.

There's a million ways to go, make your own way up if you want to!

------
Andrenid
Maybe push the "shared pins" aspect? Let friends post up local restaurants
they like, and then show which of your friends have been there recently, etc.
The social aspects is something Latitude is missing. Something like Latitude-
meets-Foursquare would give enough extra for people to use it over Latitude.

Also push that you're not google, and therefore the location data on your app
isn't tied with other aspects of a persons life. "Your location is ONLY used
to share with specified friends". That's a major thing that puts me off
Latitude (even though I do use it, it's always on my mind).

~~~
sgns
Speaking off-the-hook as a normal nerd, I like this angle. There's actually
plenty of Google stuff I might be interested in, but their size and my privacy
concerns, partly about Google, keeps me off.

Cultivate your trustworthiness as Andrenid says and you will probably have at
least my business and quite some more. Explore (even more?) just what keeps
people from sharing their location - their privacy concerns and how they, and
you, can get around it in a way that is useful to them. That said, I'll check
out your app.

I also really liked someone's suggestion up-thread to animate your app and
make it a good place to hang out. That sounds like an app I could and would
use. Best.

~~~
locopati
Second this idea - privacy may be the big new selling point of future
services. Trust a bigco or trust us? Public is free, but private is extra
(private groups, private social circles, private sharing of specific data).

------
neckbeard
See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2002667>

------
__Rahul
Carve out your niche. Google in your marketplace is not a seal of death - look
at Zoho.

------
kenneth_reitz
Compete.

