With the growth of more location-based mobile apps, there is some inevitable shakedown, too: the latest of these is that check-in service Forecast will be shutting down its app and website, effective July 1, because its developers, Hurricane Party, have run out of money.
The news hasn’t been posted yet on Forecast’s own site, but was relayed to existing users through an email. “We have run out of resources to keep the Forecast project afloat,” developer René Pinnell writes.
Forecast was developed a service for people to make more sophisticated use of the check-in concept, by either letting them check-in on Facebook and Foursquare before actually arriving somewhere — or, more recently, enabling automatic, ambient check-ins once they got there.
But whether that was enough to differentiate the service from those on which it sat — Foursquare and Facebook — may have been the big question for users, the developers — and ultimately investors.
Both the worlds of check-ins and ambient location apps are getting very crowded. In ambient-location apps, which pick up connections on behalf of the user, there are companies like Highlight and Glancee (bought and shut down by Facebook). Facebook itself even released and then pulled an ambient networking app just this week.
Equally, the check-in space has already been seeing some consolidation, with Facebook buying Gowalla among them. Foursquare so far has been the early-mover leader here.
The most recent figures for usage of Forecast were reported in February 2012, when the app had 100,000 users.
It’s not clear yet whether the developers’ other project, the eponymous Hurricane Party, a group-messaging app that lets contacts create spontaenous parties, has shut down as well — but it’s had no updates on its blogs since 2011 and its developers in February said that it had not managed to get much traction after launching that year at SXSW.
The full email from the developers:
The time has come for Forecast to shut its doors. Starting on July 1, our mobile apps and website will not work.
Although we’re passionate about building great products that help people connect in the real world, we have run out of resources to keep the Forecast project afloat. We sincerely appreciate you taking the time to try our app, and we hope that it brought you some value.
If you have any questions, comments, or just want to keep in touch, don’t hesitate to email us!
Best,
René Pinnell and Team Forecast
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