Social Location Based Services – Don’t Expect The Public To Start Oinking Anytime Soon

Yesterday, I had a lovely experience at the hands of social media and technology. I’ve been trying out new app Oink for the last week and although it was created, launched and hyped in San Fransisco, it helped me to discover something amazing in my own city just 500 yards from where I live and work.

Down an alleyway, I ate one of the best burritos I’ve ever had because somebody had discovered it, recommended it and shared it on Oink the week before, and I’d marked it as a “to do” item. As I sat there eating it, I marveled at how far we have come from simple review sites and how technology is making the world a better place.

The truth though is probably very different. For me, technology is changing the world because I’m a geek, but barely anybody is using Oink in my city of Dublin. There are a handful at best, lets say 50 people, that I could find, and most of them are people who were on Foursquare in the early days.

I’ve never been a fan of Foursquare, but I do have to say Oink appeals because of the rich media and the huge focus on food and drink. It’s more or less a better version of Foodspotting with the best parts of Yelp and Foursquare thrown in and it’s a really, really nice app. I’m dying for people to start using it so that I can have more experiences like I did yesterday, but I know they won’t. A handful of geeks will use it for a while, but the general public are just getting used to Twitter on their smart phones, never mind oinking as they eat.

The technology will take off in urban centres like New York and San Francisco (I’m not sure why America embraces LBS so much faster than us here in Europe), but the vital critical mass of reviewers just won’t happen here in Europe. I’d really love for these type of apps to work because they would make life so much better, but I just know they won’t which is why in a week time, I’ll stop using it. It’s a case of great technology being wasted on the ignorant masses. That’s what I was telling myself anyway as people sat around me eating burritos perfectly happy without ever having heard of Oink.