Something Else LinkNYC Got Wrong Recently

For about 2 weeks LinkNYC kiosks throughout the 5 boroughs blasted out senseless bus arrival time screens, a glitch that seemed to concern absolutely nobody, not even the folks at LinkNYC. The fact that this problem went undetected after untold thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers encountered them would seem to suggest these bus arrival screens do not really register with people in the first place, not even when they make absolutely no sense.

Another little boo-boo that probably slipped through unnoticed by anyone but me was the inaccurate attempts at geo-targeting ads for the Avengers: Endgame movie which opened a couple of weeks ago. On April 26 I spotted three such ads in Astoria, Queens, showing theater locations nowhere near their location.

At 37th Avenue and 33rd Street in Astoria this ad appeared, suggesting the AMC Loews 34th Street in Manhattan was the closest theater. That is over 4 miles away. The Kaufman Astoria theaters are closest to this kiosk, located pretty much right around the corner. Nice try, Smart City. I spotted this mistake on three kiosks in the area.

 

 

 

 

 

What I suspect this means is that geo-targeted ads are not delivered automatically based on the kiosk’s location. I think someone — not a New Yorker — looked at the address of this kiosk and decided 33rd Street in Astoria was a block over from 34th Street in Manhattan, then manually programmed to ad to appear on that machine.