
How to Use Pokemon Go to Drive Sales at Your Small Business - prostoalex
http://www.inc.com/walter-chen/pok-mon-go-is-driving-insane-amounts-of-sales-at-small-local-businesses-here-s-h.html
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bitchypat
And here I was thinking this article would provide evidence of "insane amounts
of sales", but instead it references threads on reddit which are nothing but a
couple of 2-sentence comments.

Am I out of touch expecting the author call a real-life business owner who is
involved in the pokemon thing?

The cynic in me says this article is just some marketing ploy and does not
belong here.

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cdubzzz
It is actually quite interesting and I imagine could be really useful for a
business owner who knows nothing about the game. Unfortunately the clickbait
title betrays that.

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sosuke
That was a thought I had the other day. I wonder how long it will be before a
business can signup to be a Pokestop.

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exolymph
That would be a really smart strategy for Niantic on the face of things,
assuming they charged for it, but second-order effects might be weird /
uncomfortable. For example, more and more Pokestops concentrated in higher-
income areas, which is already an issue — see
[https://twitter.com/KendraJames_/status/753212999758934019](https://twitter.com/KendraJames_/status/753212999758934019)

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reustle
Can someone enlighten me as to how the tweeter equates not having many
pokestops in their town to being racist?

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vectorpush
They detail their reasoning in their tweet, otherwise I'd suggest you ask
them, but I'd suggest that we avoid a speculative discussion about race based
on some random person's twitter rant.

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bargl
I found myself enjoying a beer at a bar near my house the other night. Most
night's I'd watch a movie, study, or something similar indoors. But it made
sense for me to stop and grab a beer if I was going to be sitting there
anyway.

Anecdotal evidence to be sure but it was fun on so many levels for me.

EDIT: The bar has a gym, and a stop all in one.

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fabean
I ate at a restaurant and stopped at a Starbucks last night with a friend
because we were playing the game downtown. If it wasn't for that game I would
have gone home and cooked dinner and made my own coffee. Once again anecdotal
evidence but I wasn't the only person last night doing the same thing.

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throwaway2016a
Anecdotally... I live in a city of just under 100k people and the downtown
normally has maybe a few dozen people walking around at night and a few
hundred more inside the restaurants.

The weekend of Pokemon go there were 300 Pokemon players hanging out downtown.
It helps that literally every storefront is a pokestop. I don't know how much
business they generated, though.

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vwcx
I am more interested in seeing how Pokemon Go can encourage voter turnout come
November.

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numo16
That will definitely be interesting to see. I know my polling location is a
PokeStop, so I might have to sit around and observe a bit on election day this
year.

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LyndsySimon
While I'm play PoGo, I'm most enjoying watching the second-order effects: how
small and large businesses are reacting to the sudden change, how groups of
people are congregating in places and with people they'd never otherwise see,
how people who see games in general as juvenile see (or don't see) what's
happening around them...

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option_greek
I would bet that AR games is where advertising dollars are going to flow next.
Interesting to see the dismissive comments in this thread.

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lips
Clickbait dot com

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jamisteven
Seriously do not understand this phenomenon

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exolymph
Title is clickbait — the reality of the article is more like "How to Use
Pokemon Go to Drive Sales at Your Small Business". Which is still interesting!
Just not the topic promised by the current title. Can dang or OP change it?

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sctb
Thanks, we've updated the title.

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AWildDHHAppears
At the Gym I go to (a real, physical gym, not a Pokemon gym) we had people--
grown adults who worked next door at LinkedIn--wandering around outside
looking for monsters.

It's insane how popular this is.

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_RPM
Grown men and women people playing this game is beyond me.

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vectorpush
Is there a certain age where you're supposed to stop playing video games?

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_RPM
I'd imagine so. I stopped at around 12. There are much more productive things
to do in life than play games on your phone. I'm 25 and I have never
downloaded a game for my phone nor have I ever played one. I'm 100% serious.

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camhenlin
You sound like the most fun guy at the party.

