Daphne Tan

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The city is regularly full of Uber Eats drivers and Gorillas bikes. This often leads to dangerous and unregulated parking jams; they circle around the same block or double-park somewhere for a long time. But it does not have to be the case… Politicians and city planners can do a better job of actively managing mobility on streets and sidewalks if they embrace smart-city technology. Imagine what happens if there will be more autonomous vehicles and shared e-scooters and the current transportation and infrastructure is still lagging behind? We cannot wait any longer since we expect over 68% of the population to live in cities by 2050.

So, you probably understand why investing is important, but is now the right timing to invest in smart-city technologies? Yes, because of the covid-19 pandemic! For the previous 18 months, several cities such as New York, San Francisco, and Seattle have (partly) closed their offices, resulting in altered traffic patterns and lower public transport use, and an increase in the use of micro mobility cars.

The world is slowly starting to get back to normal, but the transportation activity is far from pre-pandemic levels. Therefore, the coming year represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for city leaders to implement smart-city technology to change street usage. Simply fixing parking would already be a game-changer, since a driver spends 17 hours per year looking for a parking spot! This costs the average driver around 345 dollars in wasted time, fuel and emissions.

Why is it so hard to change? There are many different technologies, systems, and stakeholders, which makes it a huge management challenge. Ideally, there would be a digital mobility and data platform that serves as a city’s technical basis. All city mobility services would be run on a single payment processing data platform, allowing the rules, prices, and logic for servicing the parked vehicles to be dynamically managed. The platform must also be agile enough to effortlessly integrate new technologies as they emerge, being prepared for the future.

While citizens will gain the most from smart-city solutions, they will not be able to experience them until visionary city leaders move immediately and implement new technology platforms. Hopefully, they realize that NOW is the time!

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Snapchat is expressing a desire to become a socially powered local discovery engine. In the last few years, the company have launched several geo-local efforts such as Geofilters, Snap Map, Local Place Promote and Local Lenses.

The common thread in these movements is the idea that social interaction may spark local, in-person activities, like meeting a friend for a drink. This, in turn, increases Snapchat’s engagement, especially when looking at the Gen-Z generation. Higher engagement and deeper relationships with local companies, who are prospective advertisers, equal income for an ad-centric company like Snapchat.

Snap’s most recent launch in line with their geo-local strategy is ‘My Places’. A feature that adds structure to local discovery by providing new ways to interact with 30 million local businesses. It specifically allows Snap Map’s 250 million users to tag, share, and check into their favourite locations.

Mapvertising

My Places’ user interface is organized around three tabs; “Visited” the places you’ve checked into, “Favorites” lets users decide which places they like best, and “Popular” is a discovery engine that algorithmically suggests new places to its users.

The latter is arguably the most significant since it further distinguishes Snap Map from Google Maps. Snap analyzes information such as a user’s present location, previous check-ins or “favorite” places, and how all of these signals flow from one’s Snapchat social graph to generate intelligent suggestions.

The launch of My Places also allows Snapchat to add layers, for example: an “entertainment” layer with data from Ticketmaster. More layers will develop around food, fun, and more.

Furthermore, it also aligns with Snapchat’s ‘Local Place promote’. It offers SMBs to pay for exposure and targeted mapvertising within the Snap Map UX.

Augmented Reality

My Places is in line with one of Snapchat’s biggest product targets, namely AR. Through lenses and visual search, the technology continues to fuel Snap’s revenue growth (Snap Scan). And it is already using AR in geolocal ways, such as Local Lenses.

Local Lenses are the geo-specific variant of Snap’s famous selfie lenses. They make use of rear-facing cameras to augment the physical world. This results in a wider addressable market for lens-based advertising, in addition to items that go on one’s face.

The My Places database, which grows as a result of user activity, may be able to support Local Lenses. Local Lenses, for example, can identify and annotate local businesses since they are driven by MyPlaces location data. Google’s Live View feature offers something similar.

It seems that Snapchat wants to compete with Google Maps as a local search and discovery engine. Looking at their heavy Gen-Z users and a social layer for local interactions, it could work. Do you think Snapchat will ever replace Google Maps as a discovery engine?

References:

Smart-City Tech Startups: Are They A Smart Investment?

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