There are some services which give really give you an ‘aha’ feeling when you try them out. Locomi is one such startup. Locomi has developed a Facebook application, which leverages your social graph on Facebook and marries it with location based search for major Indian cities.
Once you add their Facebook app, you can set your location. With the location set, the app maps restaurants, shopping and other landmarks in the vicinity of your location. You can discover new places and also rate and review places you’ve visited. You can see all the places that your friends have been to and the reviews left by your friends for local places. You can also see other people in your vicinity and see the reviews they’ve left for local places. Additionally, you can add listings and plot them on the map.
An OpenSocial and iPhone app are in the works and they also plan to expand to other cities beyond the current roster of 7 Indian cities. One of the key realizations that they’ve made early on is that instead of rolling out yet another social network of their own, they’re leveraging the already existing social graphs from Facebook. Which makes so much sense instead of reinventing the wheel.An awesome move on their part.
Local search is a crowded space, but there isnt a clear leader yet. And the market is ripe for innovation. I think Locomi has a killer approach and a killer product. But dont take my word for it. Try it out for yourself and let me know what you think.
Thanks a ton for the great review Pranav. Glad you liked the concept and the app. We are working at a frenetic pace to release stuff. Looking forward to hearing from the rest of the readers
I’m giving Locomi a try. It has great potential, especially when you’re living in a foreign country and are always at a lack of places in your vicinity. I’m not going to afford an iPhone anytime soon, so I hope they’re working on a humble phone app too.
Besides tapping into Facebook’s user base, I think they should consider venturing into Asian social networks, the likes of Cyworld and QQ. Good luck to the folks at Locomi
nice application!!!!!!!!!!!
@ ravi,
I’d give precedence to orkut app and getting the viral effect going — just like chakpak.
iphone app can probably take a backseat for now.
@ Shivya – Glad you think the application has potential. While expanding into other social networks is definitely something we are looking at – we also need to keep in mind the demographics that these SNS’ target and whether we can get the requisite data to serve them. We too are excited about getting Locomi on other mobile platforms. Its a great opportunity, and a challenge. Hopefully we’ll be up to it.
@ balaji – Thanks for the encouragement! Help us spread the word!
@ Pranav: Completely agree with you. Work is going on full throttle for Orkut at the moment. You should hear from us regarding this in the next few weeks!
will definately give it a try:)
Great work. I just loved it . Finally a useful facebook app. Just twittered to all friends
Thanks eKerala.
We would love to hear from you ( and your friend ) about any feedbacks that you might have to help improve the app.
“Local search is a crowded space, but there isnt a clear leader yet. ” well I beg to differ with this bcoz i feel justdial is way ahead of the competition getting almost 2lakh calls for local info every single day and more than 2 lakh hits to its website for various info. Now i agree its not organised the way locomi is for anybody can try out from ny city and compare justdial vth locomi ………..just dial beats locomi like nything ….
What a fabulous application. Google gets smarter and smarter each year.