Favspot: Location-based Bookmarking on Your Mobile

Favspot is a location-based service that helps you check-in and save all the locations you have visited and hope to visit in the future. It describes itself as a social location bookmarking service where users can save their favorite spots and share them with their friends.

The start-up is based in China but it first launched the app in Hong Kong as a test market. Edwyn Chan, a rep from Favspot, told PO that the app is pre-installed on Samsung and LG smartphones, thanks to a partnership with the HK telco, 3. Favspot has so far generated over 24,000 downloads.

There’s a fundamental difference between Favspot and Foursquare or any other location-based app. Foursquare focuses on giving badges/points while users check-in at venues or events and share locations with their friends. On the other hand, Favspot angles itself as an app that helps users track where you have been and also allows easy saving of interesting locations bookmarked by friends.

Personally, I like the idea of location bookmarking. It just makes more sense and gives more value to users — certainly better than earning badges. Here are two aspects which makes it different from a service like Foursquare:

1. Exploring bookmarked locations: Users can explore bookmarked locations through the most recent check-ins from all users, the folks you’re following, and also nearby locations. It is smacked right at the front page so users can’t miss it. However, I would prefer a cleaner homepage where users can view the locations easily. The current design focuses too much on looking pretty rather than allowing users to view the content smoothly. And perhaps, adding in a trending locations feature might be a good idea too.

2. Accessing location bookmarks: Saved locations can either be a place you checked-in to or bookmarked (or fav’d) from another user. Annoyingly, it takes extra steps to view saved locations on Foursquare since that’s not quite the purpose of the app. And if you wanted to save a friend’s location in Foursquare, you would need to tap on his/her location and do a manual check-in, which doesn’t make much sense. Favspot, however, allows you to simply save a friends location rather than doing a check-in.

Here are some Favspot screenshots:

Left - Explore and Right - Saved location bookmarks

The difference between the two isn’t very obvious. And in fact, Favspot and Foursquare have identical features within the app. That’s the challenge for the team, isn’t it? Can it successfully pull off a location-based bookmarking app? Or will it be just another LBS app which will get lost in the crowd of Foursquare, Jiepang, and Gowalla?

You can give Favspot a try here and let us know your feedback.