It is clear to every business owner that apart from investing in the place of business, these days, he must heavily invest in the business’ Web presence and appearance. The business’ Web site is not less important than the physical location. FaceBook, Twitter and, in some cases, LinkedIn have become a critical part of the marketing and sales effort for a business of any size. Other popular location-based social networks, such as Foursquare, Yelp and others are picking up very fast, and users are ‘losing interest’ in the venue itself… clients are stuck with their eyes on their phone, as if the location has become another virtual entity.
Businesses are now looking for the right balance between their physical space and the very-much-alive virtual scenery. Good old Digital Signage is having a quick and quite amazing ‘face lift’ to exactly meet this demand. The Digital Signage industry had been in a somewhat stagnation mode for quite some time, but the new and growing need of combining social media, virtual activity, and location-based services with the venue itself had brought back the color to the Digital Signage operators’ pale cheeks.
Digital Signage service providers, led by innovative Digital Signage software companies that base their software on Android based components have quickly realized that if you can’t beat them, you must join them, and not one minute too late. Technologies like SSI and others are popping all around in the arena of personal (in my mobile) and public (screen presented to all) interaction. Games, polls, chats and other widgets are being developed by Android-based Digital Signage software providers under the assumption (quite a safe one) that this extension of the Web services into the local scene is exactly what businesses are looking for.