Racing to Conquer the Globe: The Emergence of Geolocation
Foursquare and Gowalla. One, a fantastic childhood game. The other, an offshoot of a popular smoothie brand? Nope! They’re both big names in the newest social networking trend—geolocation. The progression makes sense: profile viewing led to wall posts, which led to to status updates, eventually leading to status updates on your mobile device, which could only logically lead to where we find ourselves today—in love with physical location updates. And word on the street is that these location-based services, though still relatively under the mainstream radar, are here to stay. But nothing this interesting stays a secret for long, and starting this weekend we may see the beginning of the end: this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSWi), running March 12-16 in Austin, Texas, will be the “ strategic playing field” for the current geolocation forerunners.
So what’s the attraction? For consumers, location-based social networking offers a fun way to stay in touch with friends, play games, and connect happenings in the social media world to the real world. For start-ups and conglomerates, the benefits are tinted green: marketing strategies, supplemented with personal information, can be honed to perfection. Do you visit H&M or Top Shop? How about your local health food store? Marketing agencies have ads for you—but before now they had no way to deliver them directly to your door.
As in any emerging market, competition to lead the field remains fierce, with no one application having yet established a stronghold. SXSWi will provide the battleground for Foursquare and Gowalla, but as the popularity of location-based services grows, so will interest from social media’s biggest players. This means that Facebook, Google and Apple are most likely right around the corner with tricks up their sleeves. In fact, we’ve already seen tweeks that add location-based services to larger packages: Google Buzz, the newest entry into the microblogging world, already lets users “geotag” their location. And Yelp, built on location-based searches and reviews, began using check-ins itself earlier this year.
With users valuing multi-functional applications (iPhone, Walmart, anyone?) over small, specialized companies, any of these social media giants could easily end Foursquare or Gowalla’s chance at domination. So hang tight: it shouldn’t be long until we see someone emerge victorious.
Courtesy of CNet
