exploratisserie

location-based marketing for things that move around

Last night I had a craving for Girl Scout cookies: thin mint types, specifically. But I didn’t know where any of the Girl Scouts in Menlo Park were. I know what you’re thinking: if this is my biggest problem at 2AM (while I’m sick and have to get up at 7AM the next day), there’s probably something seriously wrong with me.

But in the greater context of things in life (because we must always extrapolate generalities from mundane details in life - I know, right? Wisdom!), it’s freaking hard to find things that move around: Girl Scouts, food carts, hippies that sell the pretty pretty earrings in Berkeley, hookers, drug dealers, etc. There are no permanent addresses you can search on Google Maps, and Craigslist is not very map/real-time friendly. There’s Twitter, but it’s hard for smaller merchants to acquire a lot of followers, and it’s kind of annoying to be following all these food carts all the time (too much noise, spam, not hungry all the freaking time - or rather, getting fat all the freaking time = not good, sort by location sucks).

I just want to search “Girl Scout cookies” and see a map where all the Girl Scouts are selling cookies rightfuckingnow. Or maybe also in an hour or so, marked in a different color, because I can probably wait an hour. Maybe. Perhaps they can even have profiles with ratings in case they are dirty, dirty liars. We can also be nice to them and share data around where people are looking for Girl Scout cookies… so the “providers” can come to you; that would make me even happier! All your cookies are belong to me. Screw no arbitrage – I’m going to ping the server a ton, hoard them all, and then sell them at a premium during off-season.

Casey thinks I’m seriously creepy for wanting a “Girl Scout Trackr” application on the iPhone (because everyone knows that all good things on the Internet are misspelled). In his words, “what would all the Asian mothers say when their daughters become ‘providers’” and exist to give people their ‘fix’?  Objectify little girls less, right?  Perhaps it can be called “The Source” and provide all the things that people crave / want that move around. I really don’t know why Foursquare, Loopt, etc. aren’t integrating this into their services.

Someone make it, please. I’ll proselytize. No seriously, I’ll find all the Girl Scouts and all the soccer moms that enable them (because they are the ones with the fancy iPhones - unless you’re in Menlo Park, I guess).

Or bring me some cookies :)