Geolocation gathers steam
Jinfo Blog

17th May 2010

By Nancy Davis Kho

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Any way you look at the metrics, geolocation - after years of waiting in the wings - is finally having its moment. Theoretically it's been possible for quite some time to locate people or computers, using global positioning satellite, wireless, or IP address data. But it's only been in the last twelve months, as mobile computing courtesy of smartphone has moved mainstream and social sharing of "where are you?" data has become commonplace, that geolocation has finally hit its stride. To give a sense of the speed of market growth, one has only to look at Foursquare (http://foursquare.com/.) Launched in March 2009, this Location Based Service (LBS), along with competitors like Loopt (www.loopt.com) and Gowalla (www.gowalla.com), encourage users to self-report their location via GPS-enabled smartphones. What's the incentive? While there is a gaming aspect to it - who DOESN'T want to be the putative 'mayor' of their local pub, as measured by the frequency of check-ins? - the bigger play is hyperlocalized advertising and offers. For instance, Mashable reported today that the 'mayors' of Starbucks in the U.S. will now get discounts on their caffeine fixes (http://digbig.com/5bbpqr). And as Penny Crossland reported in her post on April 12th, FT.com is giving free FT.com subscriptions to users who check in at select sites near universities with prominent business schools. http://www.vivavip.com/go/e28571 Offers like these are fueling the rocket-ship growth of these location based services. Foursquare announced in May that it had achieved its 40 millionth check in - up from 22 million just one month earlier. An April New York Times article reported that Gowalla had 250k users with a month-over-month growth rate of 65% (http://digbig.com/5bbpqt). Not surprisingly, established social networks like Facebook and Twitter are clamoring to include geolocation data within their platforms, and that could mean a shakeout for LBS vendors. In December 2009 Twitter acquired Mixer Labs, which had a "places finder" service, and Google acquired mobile advertising platform AdMob for US$750 million. This article from eMedia Vitals provides a clear overview of what goes on behind the scenes to capture geolocation data ( http://digbig.com/5bbpqw). If geolocation isn't part of your B2B information vocabulary yet, rest assured it will be - and soon.

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