Ah, I Love The Smell of Competition in The Morning.

I don’t think I’ve gone a few weeks without having to catch my heart in my throat when I see a new web service that closely resembles Geon. A year ago I had the confidence that no one was doing anything like what I was thinking of and as such the target audience I was going after was all mine. More recently though there have been a few services that began to encroach on my territory but for the most part they were far enough away that I could write them off as filling a different niche. This morning however saw a product come out that is basically identical to the core concept of Geon’s idea of “What’s going on there?” so you’d think I’d be sitting here wringing my hands with worry.

The thing is though I’m chomping at the bit to beat them at their own game.

This isn’t the first time a location based communication app has managed to cross my path. The first such one was called BlockChalk, an interesting idea about leaving messages around your block for other people to find. They appear to be quite mature as well, their iPhone app is solid and they even have an API that’s pretty open. I initially stumbled across them in my first search for data feeds that had geo meta data in them and almost lost it when I started browsing the service. Still they’ve been around for a while and they didn’t appear to be garnering a lot of trafficor media attention nor did they have some of the capabilities that I was planning to integrate into Geon. They’re on my watch list (especially considering the talent they’ve managed to rake in) but in reality they just proved that there was a market for something like what I was developing, always a good sign.

This morning however saw the launch of a new application called Qilroy and I’ll be damned if these guys aren’t right up my alley:

Qilroy, a Qualcomm Service Labs-incubated project, launches today as a platform that groups tweets and other status updates by location. Like “calling a payphone at the mall,”Qilroy introduces a concept called peer-to-place communication, which enables multi-platform conversations to take place from anywhere in the world.The name is a Qualcomm take-off of “Kilroy Was Hereand the service lets users share their location with others and also see a visual of all the conversations happening around any location. Users can type in any zip code or place like “The Eiffel Tower” or “Athens, Greece” for instance and interact through the Qilroy platform, Facebook or Twitter with anyone in that location who is sending open updates from Twitter, Foursquare or Gowalla.

Aggregating information feeds based on location? Allowing users to post messages to a location? Yep either this is a case of finding independent inspiration or someone has been reading my blog over the past couple years and implemented the idea quicker than I could. I’m tending towards the former though as the service shares many core principles that I’ve discussed on this blog previously but there are several differences that separate us. Most notably they’re looking a lot like Twitter, opting to farm out the additional services (like picture hosting) to others in order to keep their service simple. They’ve also made the smart move of letting you start conversations through other mediums in Qilroy which will break down the initial barrier of getting a user to install yet another application. I’d say it’s a decent attempt at the location based communication idea (despite its launch day woes) and I can see people using it.

But don’t think that means I’m giving up on Geon. In fact this has made me more convinced than ever that I’m onto something, and that it’s the best out of the lot.

I’ve been keeping the latest version of Geon on the down low for a while now, alluding to the fact that I had completely dumped the last design (there’s a picture of it somewhere on this site, see if you can find it!) and codebase in favour of revamping it with a focus on the core idea of finding out what’s going on at a certain location. It’s come along quite well with many features that I’d put off for a long time now in the application and functioning as expected. In fact the web client is almost complete at a core level meaning that I’ll be working on the iPhone application in the next week or so with a private beta to follow shortly after. All I really want to say at this point is that whilst I may have solid competition in the form of BlockChalk and Qilroy I know can beat them at their own game. Their presence confirms that my idea has a tangible market and that only motivates me to do more.

So my competitors, even though I know you probably won’t see this post until long after I’ve launched my application hear this: I’m gunning for you. I might not be the best developer, best business manager or best anything out there but I’m determined to build this product that’s been rattling around in my head for almost two years. Anyone who knows me will tell you that if I’m determined to get something done it will happen, by hook or by crook and I’ll be damned if anyone other than me becomes the king of this location space.

Game on.