Beyond the Check-In Hype: Unmotivated Users [Infographic]

Silicon Valley often falls in love with ideas that work great for geeks, early adopters and Robert Scoble. These ideas, however, often leave mainstream users cold. Check-in-based location sharing services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Co. are one of the most recent examples of this. The good folks behind the Social-Loco conference (which incidentally starts tomorrow) teamed up with digital agency Beyond to take a closer look at what could motivate consumers to start using these products. Today, according to these companies’ research, almost 50% of those who currently don’t use check-in apps simply have no motivation for doing so.

So what would motivate these users? According to this study then, if location-based services really want to get new users onto their services, they will have to focus on coupons for restaurants and cafes, or give users info about homes that are for sale in their area and tourist info about cities they visit. While most check-in apps focus on making it easier for users to find friends, the majority of mainstream consumers is not interested in this. Only 12% would be motivated to use a check-in app for this. Looking a bit deeper, it’s also worth noting that mainstream consumers are more likely to use Facebook Places, Groupon and Twitter (55%, 40% and 20% respectively) than Foursquare and its startup brethren.

Virtual Badges and Becoming Mayor? Mainstream Users Don’t Care

It’s interesting that all these features that non-users say would motivate them to check in are already available in numerous products. Maybe, at the end of the day, checking in is simply too much of a hassle and maybe getting a coupon somewhere just isn’t worth the trouble for most people. Only 1% of mainstream users, by the way, said getting a virtual badge or becoming “mayor” would motivate them. Geek? 21%.

Note: click image for high-resolution version