Virtual Lines
The upcoming release of the iPhone 4 has me thinking about how insanely long the lines will be for the early adopters who pre-ordered Apple’s latest “it” product. The formation of physical lines seems so 1995 with the technology we have today. Here’s an idea I came up with that just may work to resolve queuing up outside the Apple Stores the night before June 24th.
The idea will work with location based services like foursquare or Gowalla. Rather than lining up and waiting for things like the iPhone, you’ll simply check into a virtual line. So for the iPhone release, you’ll still need to show up to the Apple Store early, or when the virtual line “opens,” and check in. When you check in to the line, you’ll be assigned a number in relation to your place in the line. Once you have the number, you are free to go home and do other things (i.e., sleep or pace around your living room in excitement).
With the information Apple now has from the virtual line check ins, they can accurately tell you a time to come back to the store for pick up. They can even imply a rule where if you aren’t present within 5 minutes of your pick up time, your place in line isn’t valid and to the back of the line you go! If Apple wants to make it interesting, they can make the virtual line opening time a mystery or give a time frame when the virtual line will open. For example, between 9 PM to 11:30 PM on June 23rd the line will open, so you’ll literally have a group of people outside the store refreshing their foursquare/Gowalla pages looking to check in.
Presently, foursquare will allow you to check in from thousands of meters away from a location, but to make the idea really work, there will have to be maximum number of meters you can be from the Apple Store. You won’t be able to check in from your apartment (unless it’s across the street), you will have to be within 15 meters of the front door, for example. This will ensure people who check in are actually interested in the phone. The main point of the idea is to free up your time between when you arrive at the scene of the line and when you return for the iPhone.
While many claim Apple thrives off the media attention it receives from people lining up a day out from the release of a new product, the media attention with virtual lines will likely be even greater than physical lines. Why? Because this is new. In comparison to the past, this is revolutionary, so it is definitely newsworthy. Imagine if a picture of a previous iPhone launch at 6 AM, (an hour before the doors open) is coupled with a picture of what 6 AM looked like for this release. The massive line from 2008/2009 compared to a ghost town type picture will speak volumes, especially when the iPhone 4 will likely outsell the previous models.
The first location based service (LBS) to offer the “virtual line” feature and get a big name company to use it for either a product launch or anything else “line worthy” has the potential to be the market leader for LBS’s. If a small start up created this application and convinced Apple to use it for their release of the iPhone, well then thousands and thousands of people are forced into using this app. Not only that, the quality of the people who just downloaded this application is a main factor in the spreadability of it in its attempt to go mainstream. In the case of the iPhone, everybody who downloads the app is an early adopter in the tech world. These are the people that start ups need to start using the product to get the word out. And if the product is anything above average, the chances they’ll keep using the service is quite high.
Knowing the value of having a sole LBS as the provider of the virtual line, it can not surprise anybody if brands start charging the LBS company’s for the rights to the line. In a way, a foursquare of Gowalla (or that new start up) will have to “sponsor” the line in return for users and awareness. Pretty fair trade off, no?
