We first covered Scvngr a couple of months ago. They are a location-based service that is doing things a bit different. Rather than simply earning badges for checking in, their making the road to rewards a little more challenging.
One company that has partnered with Scvngr is Tesla Motors. They’ve set up a challenge that requires users to visit one of Tesla’s eight U.S. showrooms, and snap a photo of a Roadster to earn three points. Or, players could figure out how many battery cells power each Tesla vehicle for another two. Players who complete the Tesla challenges will unlock a limited edition Tesla badge.
Sounds kind of like Amazing Race. The problem is that SCVNGR was working off of a limited database. If you’ve used any location-based service, the most annoying thing you have to go through is manually entering information for a venue.
Today, users worldwide will avoid this annoyance as Scvngr switches to a database pre-populated with data from Google Places. Google has decided to give SCVNGR access to a developer preview of the Places API, which should make the service much more interesting. It’s no surprise that Google would give SCVNGR a nudge, it was one the first investments made by Google Ventures.
SCVNGR already has partnerships in place. Foursquare and Gowalla are both involved with Facebook Places while also diversifying beyond the simple check-in game. Maybe we will finally see some interesting things happening in the location space.
via TechCrunch