Both South Africa and Ireland have home grown news in location-based mobile social networking today. Irish company Locle is working on a service that will work on any mobile device, and South African Vodacom is introducing a location-based advertising option for it’s MoSo, The Grid.
What is location-based mobile social networking?
Very simply, an LBS mobile social network maps both your and your friends locations onto a map. So not only can you share info, media and updates with your friends, but you can also find out exactly where everyone is quickly easily. Privacy is an important issue with these services, and they all have various opt-in and data protection options.
Locle:
The basis of Locle is that everyone should be able to access LBS mobile social networks. Many of them currently just work on smartphones or iPhone – Locle operates around SMS. It performs the same functions as any other LBS MoSo, but you can set it up to send you an SMS whenever a friend of yours is nearby. It also generates location data via cell-tower triangulation, so you don’t need a GPS phone to use it. A recent video recording of a Locle presentation gives some more detail:
The Grid:
Vodacom has introduced an LBS advertising platform, a java app and an on-line website for the most recent version of it’s MoSo, The Grid, yesterday. The new option serves advertising targeted by the physical location of the user.
From the release:
Vincent Maher, Vodacom portfolio manager for social media, explains: “One of the most significant elements of the new web site and Java application is that some of the advertisements are delivered based on the location of your cellphone. For launch we have partnered with Nandos, Sportscene, Jay Jays and Synergy pharmacies to deliver advertising within radii ranging from 0 – 10km from your physical location, delivered via the web. When an ad is location-targeted on the web you will see a line of text below it that tells you how far away from you the physical location is. Nandos have used this to pinpoint some of their stores in Cape Town on our maps and have customised each ad to that specific location.
What we think?
There’s no proof yet that location-based mobile social networking is going to work. It certainly seems like the logical application of social networks to mobile devices, but many people find that the idea of others being able to see where they are a bit too invasive. I can empathise with that. In many ways, the Locle idea would be even more invasive. At least with other services people might not be looking at their MoSo when you’re near. With Locle, they get automatically updated via SMS that you’re near – and SMS is the one thing that everyone checks as soon as it arrives.
