Just by browsing the app store on your iPhone, you can literally find an app for just about anything you need! A month or so ago, I took a trip to Universal to see a concert. Even though I'd been to the park tons of times, my friend and I decided to go a little early and ride some of the rides. Because we'd be been before, we weren't interested in waiting in line for hours to go on a ride we'd already been on. So, we found an app to let us know the wait times for the various rides. You can check it out here: Wait Watchers. Just as the article says, the app relies on users at the park to update the wait times. We found that they weren't accurate because they hadn't been updated recently enough (try months off). There could be several reasons for this - parkgoers may not know about/have the app in the first place or users may be 'lurking' but not contributing. While this seemed like a great idea for an app, it would probably be more effective if it were updated by the park as the wait times for each line were updated. I guess you could say that this is a case where just lurking could be harmful (or at least not helpful). Thoughts?
Jenn,
ReplyDeletethat's sounds like a useful app, too bad it wasn't performing as well as it should.
Here's another way to view it: They built an app for a community to communicate. However, park visitors aren't really a community and they lack a sense of interdependence and reciprocity. Thus, the good idea lacks sufficient buy-in and goes nowhere.
ReplyDeleteThoughts?
Vanessa,
ReplyDeletethat could very well be true. No community and so no reciprocity. I wonder why the park itself couldn't update the times. Maybe it's against its own self-interests for some reason or another. I can't imagine it would be very expensive.