What's holding back location based services?

Published by Ewan Spence at 20:10 UTC, May 13th 2010

Leah Betancourt is wondering why the location based services so beloved of Web 2.0 people haven’t taken off and been adopted by the general public. The arguments boil down to two areas (“privacy issues” and “where is the value”) and an easy solution doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. More below.

Beatancourt writes (on Mashable):

Location-based service providers are addressing these concerns by giving consumers more control. Most current iterations of the popular location-based networks allow users to opt-out of location tagging and notifying users when their location is being shared…

For early adopters, though, the long-term promise of more value through targeted ads, coupons and deals, along with the game mechanics (i.e., badges and “mayor” competitions) instituted by some networks has made location-based services worth the potential privacy headaches.

Is the answer to jumpstarting location services Twitter and Facebook? This of course pre-supposes that Twitter is actually in the mainstream (and I’m tempted to argue that it isn’t), but certainly Facebook could leverage their user base to at least think about their location and adding this to their profile.

Users of the new Ovi Maps client will be aware that Facebook is supported by Nokia in the location service through the “share location” function recently added, but it’s a long road from an optional feature to being able to count on everyone using location information and sharing this with their social network.

Location may well be the next big feature for mass adoption, but perhaps the value to the market will not in broadcasting where you are to everyone, but in something a little bit more subtle?


 

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News Discussion

Unregistered
We don't need it.
seki
from a developer point of view is the cost .. especially the Nokia location based services .. last time I looked the basic entry level was prohibitively expensive .. even to provide a development environment was going to run into several hundreds of dollars even for a single site. With no evidence to show my employers the worth of this without a demonstration system I decided that location services could go on the back burner for the time being.
Copper
Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered
We don't need it.
That sentence sums up my opinion too.

Most folks that I've talked to have not been excited about these so-called location-based services. They simply don't see real value in them.
Unregistered
no person wants the other half knowing where they are all the time surely and i can often think of times i could do with friends and neighbours not knowing. No im not cheating just like to chill.. i certainly am not going to advertise where i am..

imagine that the location service is hacked yes joe bloggs has left his house and got on a train to scotland lets do over his house..

or joe i thought you said you were out last night?

of course you could turn it olff but then thats more suspicous to "loved ones"

like the video phone sounds great to those designers but no one in the public wants or needs...
Biggles
I'm in the "it's useless" camp, mostly.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Unregistered View Post
like the video phone sounds great to those designers but no one in the public wants or needs...
The main use case for video calling is probably adult calls.

Which makes me think that location based services are probably going to be popularised by AdultFriendFinder first. And if not, I've had a great idea...

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