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In case you haven’t heard the big thing this year in the Social Media and Web 2.0 land is mobile and location based services.
Many mobiles now offer both web wifi as well as GPS functionality. This mean that you can interact with the social cloud and they can know where you are. This is great for finding out where the nearest coffee shop is and how to get there. You can also find where is popular to eat and what your on-line buddies think of a place.
A few I have been trying out are Foursquare – Gowalla and Vouchercloud.
Vouchercloud is essencially a voucher book that knows where you are and points you to all the special offers in your area. If for example you are in Reading doing some shopping and fancy lunch it will come up with 3 or 4 Restaurants that have a special offer on. Show the waiter your phone and he will take the discount off your bill. This of course relies heavily on the owners of such outlets taking up the service from Vouchercloud. This is a service that can only get better.
Foursquare and Gowalla. My testing of Foursquare and Gowalla is in it’s very early days and I will continue to add stuff as I find things out. Both seem to be a cross between a social network and a game. The Idea is as you travel around you “check in” to places you’ve been. The more time you visit places the more points you earn. Foursquare seems the more polished out of the two and I had to turn Gowalla off as my iPhone was getting alerts to what every single user within 10 miles of me was doing. You get to leave tips on the places you visit. Like “try the fish it’s lovely” or “don’t drink the water” that kind of thing. For this it could be useful but the whole game aspect detracts from that.
Then there is google buzz hot on the trail of these. Linking in with google maps and google earth. Full version is yet to be released and I have only managed a limited time on the iPhone app. Does look impressive. A bit like a cross between facebook, twitter and google maps. This could be a game changer.
One thing is for certain location based mobile apps are the future. There are many benefits and uses for this technology we haven’t even considered yet. Exciting times ahead.