Sōhōkō is a cloud platform for associating content and defining interactions with Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) beacons.<p>Existing platforms in this space are largely focused on pushing content (with a bias towards marketing); our platform is focused on bi-directional experiences between users and hot-spots of interaction represented by beacons. Apps running on Sōhōkō can share users, beacons, and content, which helps app discovery.<p>Instead of launching the platform directly, we plan to build it through internal dog-fooding as we build the first set of applications available on the platform. These first apps will be focused around letting individual users create experiences with a single beacon.<p>The first app we are building is Sōhōkō Messenger, a messaging app where BLE beacons are used to deliver messages contextually. Instead of a message being sent when composed, delivery is triggered when either the sender or the recipient enter or exit the region of a beacon they have shared with each other. In the single-user use-case, this could be used to send contextual reminders; when sharing a beacon with friends, family, or co-workers, this provides a new way to receive messages in the right context and we feel this creates a little nicer feeling compared to the current state of affairs where we send messages regardless of the recipient's context. We feel such a personal use-case is a great place to start because messaging in the home is a place where we will be forced to be very careful about protecting user privacy.<p>400M beacons are estimated to be deployed by 2020[1], creating a revenue opportunity from micro-transactions for user interactions payed by developers on the platform.<p>Short term, there will be some revenue from premium app features and in-app beacon sales, but will mainly be from SDK licensing and developer partnerships with early adopters.<p>http://sohoko.io<p>1. http://www.reuters.com/article/ny-unacast-idUSnBw265779a+100+BSW20160126