Japanese Place Based Screens Embrace Social Media

Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief

The announcements and deals from LocaModa are coming thick and fast and the latest is news of a licensing agreement between themselves and FUJIFILM Imagetec Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of FUJIFILM Corporation. This of course is hot on the heels of the joint Posterscope / LocaModa White Paper.

We are told that earlier this year, the two companies collaborated to develop a Japanese version of LocaModa’s place based social media platform and present technologies and interactive media strategies to a digital out of home conference hosted by FUJIFILM Imagetec.

This new agreement enables FUJIFILM Imagetec to develop and sub license LocaModa’s platform. FUJIFILM Imagetec President, Mr Koji Sato, told us “Our agreement with LocaModa is strategically very significant. The first wave of the digital out of home industry was marked by broadcasting technologies, but such technologies are clearly being disrupted by the web. LocaModa pioneered the use of the web and social media to make digital out of home screens more engaging and measurable. Today, they are the leaders in place-based social media in the US, and we welcome the opportunity of leveraging their patented platform in Japan”.

LocaModa Inc. CEO, Stephen Randall, explained “Social technologies such as Twitter and Facebook prove that people want to be more connected. This isn’t limited to web-based and mobile screens, but all screens; in other words, it also benefits out of home screens. On my recent trip to Japan it was evident to me that social media is very popular. For example, at Shibuya Station in Tokyo, we monitored over 70,000 interactions via location-based application Foursquare. And now with Facebook Places entering Japan the market is at a tipping point. Engagement with social media is a global phenomenon and so we are delighted that FUJIFILM Imagetec is paving the way for what we call DOOH 2.0 in Japan. This is very encouraging for the digital out of home industry.”

Every LocaModa enabled screen can display user generated social streams including email, photos, Twitter and Facebook. Each social stream requires different rules enabling the right content to reach the right screen at the right venue at the right time.

The technology challenge of displaying social media on multiple networks with multiple venues and multiple screens is far more complex than displaying social media on a single screen. LocaModa’s patented platform enables every screen to have its own content filtering guidelines, as well as different visualization treatments for specific markets and use cases. In addition, many social streams from sources, including Twitter, require special consideration for the number of times a platform interacts with the APIs (application program interface) to maintain a responsive user experience.

FUJIFILM Imagetec will be developing and marketing a range of cross channel place based social media applications that complement its digital out of home systems. Additionally, FUJIFILM Imagetec aims to sub license LocaModa’s place based social media platform and to be a center of excellence for place based social media in Japan.


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