Qrank: Location Based Service Meets Trivia

Mark Bebawy October 8, 2010 Tweet

Location based services are all the rage these days. One of the most popular of them, Foursquare, adds a gaming element with points, badges, and mayorships to keep users engaged and coming back. These game mechanics have proven to be extremely popular and helped them stand apart from the other services out there. But Austin Based Ricochet Labs has a different take on combining location based services with gaming.

Ricochet Labs has developed a mobile app for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad called Qrank (pronounced crank) which is part location based service, part head-to-head trivia game. Users can check in and immediately compete against other players in a variety of topics like pop culture, history, and science. Users can also create their own Qrank live games with people who happen to be at the same venue with them on the spot.

But one of the most interesting aspects to Qrank are the venue specific trivia games. Businesses can sign up or have users nominate them and become Qrank venues. So for instance if you happen to be at a baseball game the questions could be geared to the game or other sports trivia. Or if you’re at a restaurant or bar, the questions could be about the location. This type of of game play could attract users who have started to suffer from checkin fatigue. It may also be attractive to businesses because there is no extra hardware needed to host these games.