There has been a pretty consistent buzz about mobile internet access growing as well as location based services. It’s not a stretch to see a lot of ways these would work well together. When you add in the popularity of the iPhone and other phones that are location aware it makes it even more realistic that we’re sitting on the brink of a web revolution.

Location based searching is bound to becoming more and more mainstream. Even without a location aware phone this is already being used. Google has their text message solution for any phones that can send and receive a text message. If you’re traveling to San Francsico a simple text of “PizzaHut San Francsico” sent to GOOGL (46645) will yield the results with the related phone numbers and addresses. Google has also released location aware searching that uses the cell phone tower ID to know your location and find results that are near by. It doesn’t work on all cell phones but they are working with multiple manufacturers to include this in other fields.

Location based social networks are already on the rise as well. Services like GyPSii and the more popular Whrrl have already launched and are hoping to get on the first wave. These services allow you to mark places you’ve been as well as show where you currently are. They also allow you to leave reviews on places and see when friends are nearby. The problem with these sites is the lack of users. Social sites take a long time to grow enough in popularity to have the majority of your real life friends on them. Once a major player in the social network field like Myspace or Facebook introduces this service expect to see it grow rapidly.

This is just the beginning of mobile location based services and there is an infinite amount of room to grow. Google has already begun experimenting and innovating in the field the next major step will be getting Myspace and Facebook to join in.

Has anyone noticed location based services used in interesting ways?

Tags: local, social media advertising, Social Media Marketing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008 at 7:28 am and is filed under Social Media Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.