Passing by the Moximity website right now resulted in me almost not writing about it. Not because they don’t have an attractive website (they do), but because at first glance Moximity appears to be a location-based iPhone app identical to the Loopt’s and Whrrl’s of the mobile world. I’m glad I took the time to dig a little more into what the company offers though, because they’re different from most of the friend-finding applications available right now.
While it is a friend-finding application, it focuses on converging your social network with places in your immediate locale. So rather than give you the exact address of your friend’s location, they offer up a place, whether it be a restaurant or business, instead. I’m assuming they’re doing this because even though they’re still in private beta and only available through the app store to Austin, Texas residents (you can try it elsewhere without place listings, but not much point) they’re focusing on monetizing the platform right from the get go.
By meshing your social network with places and events, and forging relationships with local businesses, Moximity is able to focus on providing local advertisers an actual chance at earning a return on their investment. It’s much easier to highly target effective advertising focusing on one group at a time. That’s why they’re focusing on one city at a time, starting with Austin, and then rolling out city by city focusing on areas that aren’t covered by other applications, especially college towns.
Another biggie, and I’ve talked about this before, is Moximity’s focus on integrating “traditional” web-based social platforms like Facebook and Twitter with their mobile network. In fact, when you first configure the application after download, Moximity pulls in your network from Facebook and Twitter (with more later) and lets you connect with those users also using Moximity. The company hopes that by focusing on tighter networks, and focusing on college towns they’ll be able to overcome the lacking user base issue stumping other mobile social platforms right now.
It’ll be interesting to see how this works out. While Moximity’s adoption rate is guaranteed to be slower than other mobile networks a with multi-state or national focus, they may actually be able to make money with a proper execution of their business model. And really, how effective is a company with a massive user base that makes no money?
via moximity
