Every single guy or girl knows the feeling: You get dressed up to go out, hoping to meet someone. And then you get to the bar. And it's just filled with other girls/dudes. Your night busts out, or it never quite recovers from the buzzkill.
Finally, there's a solution: WeePlaces, a info viz startup we've covered before, has used Foursquare data to figure out exactly what places in SF and NYC have the best girl/guy ratios (and vice versa). The resulting interactive chart, called Ratio Finder, has just been made available to all.
The real lesson of it is probably known to pick-up artists from around the world. Girls cluster around cafes, shopping, and parks. Guys like bars. Take New York, for example:
Ergo, if you're a guy, you should zone in on pick-up spots by the light of day, if you'd like to have your pick among more ladies. Likewise, if you're a girl on the prowl, nightlife favors you. Moreover, the old adage about SF having far more men than women, and NYC having far more women than men, seems true.
Compare, for example, check-ins at nightlife spots (one of the many sorts of venues you can refine the maps by). In San Francisco, bars, on average, have 14% more men:
Buy in NYC, the ratios are far more balanced, with about 2% more men than women:
Words obviously can't do this justice -- check it out yourself.
The following infographic by Mark Fidelman appearing in IP Carrier Blog compares the Top 10 LBSNs feature-for-feature:
COMMENTARY: I figured location-based social networks like Foursquare, Facebook Places, Gowalla and others would be used to identify check-in "hot spots". Whether bars and clubs, restaurants, retail stores, theaters, tourists spots or in the above case, pickup joints, that's the real value of LBSNs. It helps to separate the "wheat from the shaft", so to speak. Now you know the most popular places or hot spots.
LBSNs lead to greater efficiency. Now individuals can identify hot spots by category, obtain information about each hot spot, obtain driving directions, and they're off. Less wasted time, greater efficiency, especially if you are bar hopping or on the prowl to meet members of the opposite sex.
Like anything else, "hot spots" eventually turn into "cold spots", and today's Millennial's, ever on the lookout for the next coolest place to meet friends, socialize and meet members of the opposite sex, will quickly migrate to the next new hot spot. Establishments will really have to fine tune their offerings, provide added value, to keep ahead of the competition.
If you can provide demographic or lifestyle data for each "hot spot", then you really have something. Marketer's are going to go crazy with LBSNs, because they will be able to more accurately target their advertising. Trojan and Viagra will be big benefactors, all kidding aside.
Courtesy of an article dated October 13, 2010 appearing in Fast Company Design
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