Tailored Routes, Geotracking Power Map App

Editor's note: AppCheck is a new feature that spotlights news, weather, sports and entertainment applications for mobile and tablet devices with a local hook or functionality, examining their features, audience and business model. Previous AppChecks can be found here.

If everybody wanted to get from point A to point B in the same way, then there wouldn’t be much room in the world for Hopstop. The two-year-old app, which provides navigational and routing directions for pedestrians and transit-users, thrives on the widely varying tastes of the scenic route-takers versus the straight shooters, the subway and bus lovers versus the passionate pedestrians.

To do this, Hopstop draws on enormous amounts of data from close to 500 transit agencies, Meyer said, along with equally vast amounts of street level mapping data through a partnership with NAVTEQ. [Editor's note: The spelling of NAVTEQ has been corrected] Under the app’s hood, “we have a tremendous amount of IP around a proprietary routing engine that we’ve built, as well as a proprietary geocoder and a process for ingesting and aggregating massive amounts of normalized and non-normalized data,” he said.

For the user, this results in a “multiplatform, multimarket, multimodal” service, Meyer said, that constantly revises and offers new routing criteria based on user feedback. Recent functionality additions have included stroller-friendly routes for families, biking routes (differentiating for the scenic versus efficient cyclists) and information for users about how many calories they’re burning or the carbon emissions offset of a particular route.

Owing to these customizable facets, Meyer said that Hopstop’s only real competition is the pedestrian component of Google Maps — Google Transit — although MapQuest, AT&T Navigator, Verizon Navigator, Where.com and even rumors of an Apple mapping service all loom at the periphery for Hopstop.

Those ads and deals are dropped like pins into the contextual portion of Hopstop’s interface, creating the impression of store-specific offers, even if the deal might spread more widely (such as a fast food chain deal). The monetization can be even more direct, such as when users looking for hourly car rentals are routed to the nearest rental lot and connected to online reservation services with Hertz or Zipcar.

Hopstop also offers a white label version of its app, and powers directions for clients including The Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York and Chicago, Village Voice Media, Menu Pages and New York Magazine, though Meyer said this comprises less than 10% of its business, which continues to focus on consumers.

For the near future, Meyer said Hopstop is focusing on platform and market expansions, aiming to be in over 200 markets by the end of 2012, although new routing criteria are always being added. “We continually innovate,” Meyer said. “We get a tremendous amount of feedback from a very passionate user base. They know better than we do what would make their experiences better.”

Vendor: Hopstop.com Inc.

Cost to consumers: Free

Compatible devices: iPhone, Android, Blackberry (Windows 7, iPad and HTML versions forthcoming)

Revenue sources: Geotargeted display ads, coupons and deals

White label version? Yes

Number of downloads: Over 1 million

Key characteristics: Using opt-in geotracking, Hopstop provides multimodal pedestrian navigational and transit routing for users; users can customize their route by preferences for public transportation, car rental, taxi, walking or cycling along with more granular criteria