Aloqa
Aloqa – Category design & Narrative
Aloqa was a Germany-based mobile startup initially launched as a location-based service (LBS). Its technology combined GPS location, time, device signals, and social graph information to notify users about nearby people, places, and activities. Rocket Science was engaged shortly after an ex-Googler joined as CEO to help reposition the company and elevate its market profile.
Rocket Science publicly launched Aloqa at VentureBeat’s inaugural MobileBeat conference in San Francisco, where the company quickly earned multiple industry awards. Working alongside the new CEO, we helped reposition Aloqa from being perceived as another “check-in app” to a pioneer in contextual discovery—moving beyond reactive location searches toward intelligent, push-based recommendations driven by multiple contextual signals.
To distinguish Aloqa from the increasingly crowded LBS market, Rocket Science positioned the company around the emerging category of context-aware mobile computing, helping analysts, media, and partners understand that Aloqa represented a fundamentally different approach to mobile engagement. Instead of competing against check-in apps like Gowalla and Foursquare, we shifted Aloqa into a category that it would dominate.
This strategic repositioning aligned closely with Motorola’s vision for the MOTOBLUR which was a social network-integrated home screen feature on its Android smartphones, and ultimately led to Motorola’s acquisition of Aloqa.