Google Quietly Released Leaderboard, Is It A Threat To Competitors?

Last week, Google announced the latest release version of Google Maps for Android via @googlemaps Twitter account. In its tweet, Google announced the latest release to improve battery performance for Latitude application and history location users. It turns out that within Latitude app in Google Maps is a secretly embedded new feature called Leaderboard.

The exciting thing is the Leaderboard feature is similar to services available at Foursquare. According to The Verge, with the Leaderboard feature, user will get points when doing check-in; these points will then be compared with existing friends in Google+ circle. In addition, the leaderboard will be equipped with a status level; Visitor, regular, VIP and teachers depend on the user frequency level at the specific place. The difference with Foursquare is Leaderboard does not have Mayor status for the most frequent check-in user at the site.

This move done by Google even though it's not officially acknowledged, seems to be an attempt at challenging Foursquare and Facebook. Google's advantage lies in the unification of Google services, in this case Google Maps with Latitude and Google+. In addition, the user status stratified by number of check-ins and it will help business owners to identify their customers.

Based on Google+ and its predecessor, Google Wave, Google's effort to move in social media is not as smooth as its search engine service business. It seemed that these quiet steps were done in order to test the water and to determine market reaction.

Local Location-Based Service

So how does Leaderboard affect Location-Based Services from Indonesia? When discussing Yotomo, DailySocial mentioned that this kind of startup should be able to attract many users and local merchants to be able to compete.

Because such services are mainly used in mobile devices, the application's availability in a variety of mobile platforms is one of the service provider's obligations in order to attract as many users as possible. Bouncity did its fair share of homework in this regard [but it still fails to attract enough members - Ed]

When local startups manage to implement these, Leaderboard may be the least of their worries. Moreover, instead of worrying over Leaderboard they still have more important duty: getting out of Foursquare's shadows.

[Gambar]