This year, 2010, has been baptized as “the year of localization”. Anything that involves location and is web based is called Geolocation. Geolocating something is the process by which content, including videos, tweets, blog posts, and statuses, is tagged with Global Positioning System (GPS) data, such as street addresses or coordinates.
Currently, the geolocation sector is booming, the developments are being driven by applications like Foursquare and Gowalla, and the developments and advances are happening rapidly. These apps allow the user to “check in” to a location, share it with their friends, and receive benefits for doing so.
Applications that use geolocation allow greater interaction between the user and the environment. Users can post recommendations about restaurants, movies, good places to go, or events in the area. Geolocation also encourages customer loyalty, as businesses can offer special discounts and promotions to those who “check in” at the business location. Foursquare is using this interaction to provide users with point offers, rewards, and coupons at the places they sign up. Geolocation can also allow businesses to determine which of their customers visit most often.
For example, here in the UK, the pizza company Domino’s rewards the mayor (a user who has registered the most) of each point of sale with a free pizza. A more localized one is a pub here in Cheltenham (The Brown Jug) that offers the Mayor a free steak on Mondays.
Currently, geolocation applications are mainly reaching the mobile market (to which they are better adapted) such as HTC, iPhone and any other mobile with a GPS chip. However, along with the development of the mobile market, desktop and laptop computers can now be integrated with geolocation services. Popular browsers like Firefox and Chrome have built geolocation support into their browsers.
During the rest of the year, social networks are expected to become increasingly involved with geolocation and the features that can be built around it.
Large social networks like Facebook are expected to implement their own bespoke geolocation features for their 500 million users.
Also, with the rumored development of Google Me (Google’s social networking site), the addition of geolocation to Google Maps and social networking will provide some really interesting results and developments. To get an idea of what could be created, take a look at Google’s Latitude service, which links in location with the map service.
With all the competition growing around geolocation, it’s almost certain that the future of social media will be based on location.