Interview: Groupon's Founder Is Trying to Reinvent the Audio City Tour

Launched in February by Groupon founder Andrew Mason, the Detour iOS app is a location-aware audio walking tour with multiple “Detours” highlighting various communities in San Francisco like North Beach. Detour is a fully immersive experience with a narrator that guides single people or synced-up groups through San Francisco's back streets to learn about the area’s history and visit local establishments. It's ideal, if rather impractical at even a small scale, and starting out in San Francisco doesn't really grasp the challenge of doing this in other popular travel destinations around the world. More cities are under development beginning with Austin, and Mason says an Android app will be ready by the end of the year. The "Beat Generation" tour begins at the City Lights bookstore, which was the first paperback bookstore in America and a primary base camp for the Beat writers. Across Jack Kerouac Alley, where quotes from Beat writers are engraved in steel plates in the pavement, Vesuvio Cafe is lined with black and white photos depicting Beat writers passing through in the 1950s. Detour is designed so you can walk the 90-minute route with your iPhone in your pocket. The narrator guides you from street to street and pauses for you to cross intersections. She tells you when to hop on the cable car, and she recommends you take out your ear buds before entering City Lights, Vesuvio Cafe and Caffe Trieste because the locals frown on that kind of thing. At the beginning of the tour, the narrator's daughter asks you to physically confirm that you’re aware it’s more important to watch for oncoming traffic at intersections than listen to her mother, which is accomplished by clicking an icon on your screen. With so much interest in authentic local travel, Detour provides a compelling and affordable ($4.99) experience that immerses you in the community and makes you stop and really see it, feel it and better understand it. Because you can start