MetroSEEQ

A lot of people have been contacting me about how cool Urbanspoon’s iPhone application is. Yes, it’s pretty cool and I wish I had a team to work on a cool iPhone app too to boost my coolness factor. I have several ideas but they are more practical than they are for entertainment purposes. If you want entertainment, check out the Wheel of Meal on MetroSEEQ. Now, that’s a piece of sophisticated piece of code that is far more advanced than Crazym_nus. Take a spin, you’ll know what i mean, and remember to turn the sound on too.

Okay, so why have not worked on mobile app yet? Well, the 1st reason is, I just don’t have the developers who have spare time to do it. 2nd reason is I don’t have 31 million venture money like YELP to do whatever they please. 3rd, the focus of the company is deals and coupons and there are just too many obstacles mobile coupon to be a reality now. Here are 5 reasons

1. Compatibility - too many carriers and too many devices to check phone compatibility. In short, if the world only uses iPhone and AT&T, i’d jump on it.

2. Lack of variety - critical mass hasn’t been reached for these coupons to be useful yet.

3. Lack of design depth - most advertisers haven’t started designing for mobile yet.

4. Interface/algorithm - it’s hard to come up with an interface and algorithm that will deliver you the coupon you need, when you need it

5. Hard to target - not only is tracking consumer on GPS a political issue.  There’s just not a filtering system to send you the relevant coupons yet.  In my view, I think this will have to be proactive than passive on the consumer part to acquire the coupons they want… otherwise targeting is just too difficult.

6: Optical barcode scanner not powerful enough - U.S. standard of barcode is somehow less powerful than Japan’s… that’s why they can do it first and we still have an infrastructure problem to overcome.

I think mobile coupons will happen someday. According to the reuters article I posted earlier, 77% of the consumers between ages 18-34 said they are likely to use coupons if given access to paperless technology.  77%!  That’s a pretty sure bet there if you’re a gambler.  I also suspect the number will grow given the bad state of economy, everyone is looking for a deal these days.