Highlight could be a small biz godsend

Illustration: Yellow Highlighter © http://www.siteroom.co.uk

I just returned from a whirlwind West Coast tour which found me hiking with the bison of Catalina Island and navigating the merciless traffic of Seattle for ten days. One of the things that I paid particular attention to was the Highlight app. It has zero traction in Cincinnati, but I was interested to see the level of adoption that it has achieved in cities like Los Angeles and Seattle that are closer to it’s San Francisco origin and who are more prone to early adoption.

The standard that I hold any geo app to is Foursquare. Foursquare is an app that has potential to have some success in places where there are huge audiences using it, but it also somewhat limited in its capability to reach people. Many times employees at the businesses offering Foursquare promotions in Seattle would be entirely unfamiliar with the promotion, which coupled with the reliance on people to check-in presents a steep challenge to market on their platform.

I’ve written previously about the potential that I see in Highlight. It is a geo app that uses push notifications to inform you when someone with similar Facebook friends or interests is in proximity to you. It’s a very cool concept, except no one is using it. In LAX, I got eight hits on Highlight. On foursquare there were 3000 people checked in. In Sea-Tac, I got five hits. On Foursquare there were over 1000 people checked in. Highlight is not gaining a lot of traction. I think it’s probably the lack of a clear goal (initiating conversations with people based upon our mutual love for Mashable and the fact that we were near each other on the freeway is awkward – and people oftentimes won’t respond to notes), as well as purported battery drain concerns that may have cooled early enthusiasts.

But I’m still high on Highlight. While it may not be a game changer in the big picture – for a small, geographically-specific business Highlight could provide a huge return on marketing dollars. Here’s how I envision the mechanism:

Imagine you own a neighborhood restaurant. Say you had a low-cost (delicious) dessert that you offered guests gratis for liking your restaurant on Facebook and downloading the Highlight app (you would have QR codes on the menu and would email the url in the case they were unfamiliar with QR codes).

For the cost of two desserts you just bought access to that customer every time they are in proximity to your restaurant. On your Highlight status you could have a special enticement for them to stop by – you could actively send people notes when they are close. What’s awesome is that this cost you nothing, it is a blue ocean marketing opportunity, and you have these customer’s attention in near-perpetuity.

I suspect that Google’s Project Glass (i.e. “Google Glasses”) will probably be the geo game changer, but in the meanwhile with smart phone usage at an all-time high and increasing it surprises me that a tool like Highlight isn’t being used by local businesses to set up their own customer intranet. With marketing dollars at a premium, something like this makes so much more sense to me than traditional advertising on platforms like Facebook.

While Highlight may not the blockbuster that many people hoped it might – it most certainly could be a huge tool for any business that took the time to embrace it.
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Jim Dougherty

Writer and chief of miscellany at leaderswest.com

I aspire to give people something to think about rather than tell them what to do. My favorite Google Alert is “social media research,” I am increasingly compelled by Gen Z, and I appreciate good writers agnostic of where they write. At one time I was Kred’s 12th most influential social media blogger and Klout’s most influential person on the topic of David Hasselhoff. Transplant from Seattle living in Cincinnati. Haven’t entirely adopted the local sports teams yet.