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Pepsi Loot: Pepsi’s New Geolocation Service

Are you a frequent consumer of Pepsi or Pepsi products? You’ll be excited to hear that Pepsi has decided to launch their own geolocation service—the first from the carbonated beverages industry.

According to Mobile Commerce Daily, Pepsi will release “Pepsi Loot”, a service that will let people engage with the PepsiCo brand and be rewarded for their brand loyalty.

Pepsi Loot will be available to any location that “pours Pepsi products”. Pepsi refers to these locations as “pop spots”, and there is an incentive for checking in. For every three pop spots that users check into, Pepsi will reward the user with a free song download.

Margery Schelling, chief marketing officer of PepsiCo Foodservice, commented on the new Pepsi Loot platform:

“Pepsi Loot offers a new level of brand engagement for us and helps us connect our restaurants and our customers on the go, because purchase decisions happen on the go and Pepsi wants to be a part of that.”

The iPod Touch and iPhone application will be available for download from the Apple iTunes Store as soon as mid-month, but no firm date has been announced as of yet.

It will be very interesting to see if Pepsi’s dive into the geolocation networking world will succeed. It is certainly the first app of its’ kind and if successful, it could prompt other soft drink companies to get into the geolocation world.

Do you plan on using the Pepsi Loot geolocation platform?

(Photo Credit: Mobile Commerce Daily)

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Submate Makes Your Morning Commute A Social Networking Experience

If you’re an avid user of Foursquare and/or Gowalla, you probably are well familiar with the way that geolocation works. But what happens when you take that geolocation and apply it to your morning commute?

Meet Submate—a fascinating startup that tracks users’ commutes. Yes, you read that right—the platform intends on bringing together people that you see on your morning public transportation commute every day.

The “About” page on the Submate website says that the Alpha of the service was built in less than 54 hours, so it is undoubtedly a new idea and platform. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Submate will launch into public beta in three cities—London, New York and Paris—at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam. The conference will begin tomorrow and go through April 29, 2010.

Submate is a platform that seems to be a hit-or-miss platform, at least early on. Some people are skeptical of sharing their current location, so what makes them think they’d feel any better sharing their commute into work? The platform seems like it could take off if enough people register for it and become active early on, since it is the only one of its’ kind that Geolocation Today has seen to date.

If Submate has train commutes covered, it is likely that other ways of commuting will find their own social networking sites. Bus commutes, carpool commutes—you dream it now, but it doesn’t seem all that far off, especially if Submate ends up becoming immensely popular. (EDIT: Submate will cover bus commutes—any public transportation commute.)

Would you feel comfortable sharing your commute on Submate? Do you think you could connect with other people in a meaningful way over a train commute?