Location Based Networking

As we all know, the Iphone has proven to be a popular and powerful addition to mobile technology. With GPS, 3G, and a host of other pertinent features, location-based social networking was a natural direction for newly developed Apps. As the name suggests, this niche of social networking uses your location as an additional method to link you with other people.

For example, the program Loopt allows you to see friends' current locations, get directions to them, and look at restaurant reviews near their location. Additionally, they've added a feature which allows you to view strangers' locations and to filter these strangers by a number of criteria.

Google has in the past month introduced a new service coined Latitude. It uses Google's already popular Google Maps to share your location and to see friend's location. Google's entry into this technology will definitely help to legitimize the technology and may lead other big players to enter the market.

I think it is an interesting progression for social networking given the growing popularity of smart phones, which allow for this technology. However, it will be very interesting to see how or if privacy concerns will hold this technology back and whether advertisers will be given information that casual users are uncomfortable with. Regardless, with the ever growing popularity of both social networking sites and gps/internet enable phones, this seems like it will be an area of high growth.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/28/the-state-of-location-based-social-networking-on-the-iphone/

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/02/google-tries-location-based-social-networking-with-latitude.ars