Once in a while I get a client who will let me talk about our work. Tomorrow my client FindWhere starts a beta for a free buddy finder service at Livecontacts (actually the lights are already on). The special thing about this launch is it changes a paradigm, making GPS location information on smart phones available to its users for free, a natural evolution from Web 2.0’s democratization of content.
The successful integration of location data into social applications could have far-reaching implications for the web. Everything we do will have context, suddenly providing real geographic presence to our activities. Tweeting that you are going to Barnes & Noble could result in an informal meet-up. Conferences like SxSW could become veritable geek-meet fests. Finding teenage children? Locating lost phones? Location-based social ads?Etc., etc.
Buddy finders and find-me, follow-me services have been talked about for some time. There have been several barriers to success, which have now been overcome:
1) Freeing GPS location charges. You cannot underestimate how important this is. Because Internet users expect location information for free, pay-for-use plans have dramatically inhibited the growth of location-based applications.
2) Phones did not have GPS chips enabled
3) Social networks were not as predominant a concept. Now social web technologies make networking mobile phones together a real possibility.
Several other companies are trying to do this, too, usually for a small fee (Loopt, Rummble, and Whrrl). All systems have their challenges and limitations based on the technology they use to track and to visualize.
For example, Livecontacts has a global approach using GSM networks (based on more than 200k apps tracked with FindWhere’s main service), but in the U.S.A. that means cdma users (Sprint and Verizon) are out of the picture. You can thank a bad FCC decision in the early 90s for that one. Also, the phones that are actually capable of GPS location tracking are also limited, though expanding all the time.
Livecontacts will evolve over the next few months, making it a much more socially catalized application. Badges for blogs and widgets for social networks plus the ability to see Livecontacts maps from your handset (currently on PC only).
It’s going to be exciting to see how far this location movement can go. To me, mobile and localization represent significant aspects of the true next generation of the Web, and I’m thrilled to be part of it. Anyone who wants to join in can friend me on Livecontacts.
Cool stuff, Geoff. I mentioned in a previous post on your blog (this space is more appropriate given the topic) about SquareLoop and Sprint teaming up. SquareLoop provides geotargeting and alerting so that text messages can be sent based on the geographic location of your phone. This can help coordinate first responders to schools and the like. It’s cool to see this technology applied on a social scale allowing you to locate friends. I’ve set up an account on my own to test it out… let’s see if my wife buys in to my experiment as she wanders down to Mexico and back this week.