Where you at!? Location-based social networking, Part I

One of the newer social networking concepts to hit the proverbial street are “location-based” tools. These have been slower to gain acceptance by the online community, but that hasn’t stopped a slew of location networking applications from hoping into the App store.

There’s much to be said about what these tools are and why you should (or absolutely should NOT!) be using them. Some people feel pretty strongly about this but I won’t take sides in this battle; my goal is to give you a background on the technology,  share a list of the location check-in tools I know of (and use) and, of course, give you the highlights of how they can help or hurt your business strategy.

So to explain the idea of location-based services we need to think back… The year was 1999.  Jack Kevorkian had just been found guilty of murder, the Dow Jones closed above 10,000 for the first time and world was introduced to Jar-Jar Binks in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Ahh, the innocence. This was also the year the Palm VII was released, marking the first time your handheld device could figure out where you are. The Palm used this impressive new power for local information: primarily weather and traffic. Early technology was slow and located users based on their position among cellular towers; today’s tools are much more advanced and can find you quite quickly with the use of GPS.

Location-based services vastly improve a consumers level of information. Today’s information is so specific that the iPhone 3GS will allow users to hold up their phone and “see” what is nearby, including distance information and reviews of the various locations (check out the Yelp Augmented Reality image left). These tools will allow you to search for what’s nearby based on category or title, to review locations and comment about their service, to “check-in” at various locations and see who else is there, and to easily find address and phone information or get complete directions.

Clearly, this is a huge benefit for retailers, making their products easier to find than ever. But it’s also something to be monitored. Unlike Twitter or Facebook, there is no “opt-out” of this technology. If you own a shop or restaurant, rest assured people have a record of you in location-based applications and they’re probably commenting on your services whether you know it or not. This is a powerful and growing mobile tool and the prevalence of smartphone technology has put the power in the hands of the consumer in a brand new way.

My next post will cover a few location-based applications, including Yelp, FourSquare and a newer application local to the RTP, NC area called Triout. Subsequent posts will talk more about how these tools are being used for business and in acedemia and I’ll also be talking about the potential dangers of these tools.