SXSW: We Survived the Location Wars: Don’t Forget CauseWorld
Last weekend, or the weekend before last (I’m not really sure at this point…we’ve been busy), a few of us went down to Austin, TX for the interactive portion of South by Southwest. This year, location based technologies were everywhere. If you want proof, check out the video below. It’s a visualization developed by SimpleGeo of aggregated data collected during SXSW Interactive from gelocation based services.
The main event was the fight between FourSquare and Gowalla. Both services were offering prizes for users and both had big parties. I switched over to Gowalla for SXSW (mainly because they had better prizes). If you’re wondering, yes, I won…a free taco…which I forgot to claim. Anyway, a lot of people have already written about Foursquare, Gowalla and the other major players, so I’ll move on.
One location based mobile service that stood out was CauseWorld. CauseWorld offers both an iPhone and Android app and like most other location based services, you check-in to places. With CauseWorld, every time you check-in to a participating location instead of earning a badge, you earn “karmas” or “karma points”. What makes CauseWorld unique is that every time you check-in, major brands, including Citi and Kraft, donate real money to charities. Participating charities include the American Red Cross, Feeding America, Global Giving, American Humane, Autism Speaks and many others. Check out all of the participating charities here. They teamed up with TechCrunch at SXSW and offered double “karmas” to anyone checking in to participating Austin locations during the event.
What’s great about CauseWorld is that it utilizes social media in a unique way to encourage companies to donate to charities. It also gives purpose to location-based social networks (something even the location-based haters can get behind).
I’m not going to make any predictions for who won the big fight and even though I didn’t win a free taco using CauseWorld, it’s definitely something I’ll continue using. Check out CauseWorld and let us know what you think.
