Skyhook launches SpotRank for Location-based Consumer Intelligence

Skyhook Wireless has announced a new service called SpotRank and its availability via SimpleGeo, provider of a comprehensive location API for developers. Based on groundbreaking data never before made available, SpotRank will change the way that location-based apps are built. Skyhook is showcasing SpotRank with real time location data from this week's SXSW festival in Austin and other spots around the world.

SpotRank data is based on hundreds of millions of anonymous location lookups processed daily through Skyhook's Core Engine. This location platform powers positioning requests on tens of millions of devices and applications around the world. Skyhook continually mines this data to create detailed behavioral intelligence profiles for over half a billion 100 meter "spots" around the world. Providing brand new insight into the movement of crowds through out urban areas, these profiles are based on historical trends in location lookup volume and time of day.

Developers using SpotRank will be able to add surprising and game-changing new dimensions to their apps. Public transit or traffic apps could use SpotRanks to suggest new routes based on predicted traffic volume at a specific location. Music apps could suggest playlists based on activity in an area, with upbeat songs at peak hours. Social networking apps change up venue promotions based on the typical number of people in an area at a given time of day.

"We're looking forward to diving into the SpotRank data from Skyhook. We believe this will provide us with a remarkable new way to let the Gowalla community know the hottest places nearby, at that very moment in time, as well as in the near future. It's an exciting technology and we believe it will enable us to serve up very interesting forms of local content," said Josh Williams, CEO of Gowalla.

"Skyhook's SpotRanks are comprised of anonymous information about how people travel throughout cities, the only source of behavioral intelligence of this magnitude available worldwide. By allowing developers to play with this data we expect to see eye-opening uses of location," said Ted Morgan, CEO of Skyhook Wireless. "Developers will be able to create new applications or optimize existing applications in ways we've never even thought of before."

"We are excited to be the first to offer SpotRank," said Matt Galligan, CEO of SimpleGeo. "By opening up this data to the developer community via the SimpleGeo Marketplace, we hope to empower developers with new information about where users are accessing their apps."

"Shopkick is bridging the mobile and physical retail words. We will use SpotRank to help retailers determine the best times to offer promotions, and consumers the hottest places to shop. SpotRank fits right in with our aspiration to dramatically improve the physical world shopping experience of consumers using mobile phones," said Cyriac Roeding, Co-founder and CEO of shopkick, which created the CauseWorld location-based shopping application.

Developers can sign up for the SimpleGeo API enabled with Skyhook's SpotRank data at http://simplegeo.com/. To see SpotRank in action, visit http://www.skyhookwireless.com/spotrank/worldwidemap.php.