I can see all kinds of uses for this. For example, if I'm interested in birds and I see one I don't recognize I can connect with other bird lovers and perhpas even meet up with ones who are in the same area.
Mobile social networking - the end of isolation
By: Drivers.com staff
Date: Sunday, 17. August 2008
It's a new dimension in social networking and it's taking off fast, according to a study by ABI Research, a company that specializes in providing marketing information to wireless connectivity providers.
ABI reckons that location-based social networking (LBSN) will pull in revenues of US $3.3 Billion by 2013. That prediction assumes that a web-savvy generation used to networking socially through such sites as FaceBook and MySpace will also be prepared to let their peers know where they are and what they're doing at any given time.
The technology has been around for a few years. In 2005, Google moved to acquire two pioneering LBSN startups (Meetroduction and Dodgeball) before most of us realized such a service existed. Both of these had startup problems and Meetroduction failed, but other services with different technologies have sprung up and the LBSN field gets ever more sophisticated.
GyPsii lets you record your life in video, audio and photo, geotag your content automatically, and share it in real time with friends who choose to participate. It also allows you to track participating friends and communicate with them in real time.
Pelago's Whrryl offers a similar service, allowing you to see your friends' location on your mobile phone map display. Loopt offers to turn your mobile phone into a "social compass."
A few months ago (July, 2008), Nokia purchased the European-based Plazes, to establish a foothold in the potentially lucrative social networking arena. Nokia is predicting that in the next five years mobile phone users will create 25 percent of all entertainment watched on smartphones. Mobile carrier Vodaphone purchased Danish LBSN startup ZYB in May 2008.
More serious uses
There may be more to the LBSN technology than merely sharing experiences with friends. In October, 2006, Homeland Defense Journal inc. hosted a conference on the use of LBSN in crisis management.
The conference looked at ways in which peer and ad hoc networks might link critical personnel in crisis situations. Some of the objectives will ring bells with those of us familiar with the failings of institutional responses following Hurricane Katrina:
Achieve and improve situational awareness in the mission critical areas of prevention, protection, response, recovery and preparedness
Break down barriers to information sharing and fusion
Share and search information about locations of interest
Connect to and collaborate with groups with similar information needs
Build resilient communities
The extent to which mobile web users will want to buy in to allowing themselves to be tracked remains to be seen. Meetroduction floundered when participants often failed to find anybody logged in nearby and lost interest.
In the Plazes model, when a user finds another connected member the system will display similar interests, an obvious stimulus to further interaction. Currently, the chances of finding such connections are far greater in major cities.
However, as social networking expert Judith Meskill told Wired Magazine a few years ago, "Geographically, mobile messaging is maturing - People are now beginning to get how amazingly valuable this is to their lives in motion."
Looks like our smartphones are going to be busy!
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Will,
