Combining the ‘friends’ connections made popular on Facebook, with the GPS capabilities of mobile, location-based social networking sites Brightkite and Loopt seem to be gaining traction, even where sites like Google’s Dodgeball may have thrown the ball too early and failed.
Anyone who believes that mobile will soon make “where” you are in proximity to others more important than ever has to believe that one of these startups will succeed when it comes to helping people ‘find’ each other in the not-too-distant, location-based future.
Both http://brightkite.com and rival company http://www.loopt.com/ aspire to help humanity find the ultimate connection device. The “meet me where we are when we are” bridge that only the combined power of the searchable web and mobile devices make possible.
Want to find other dog owners ready to go for a walk in a one-mile radius? Want to find anyone in your Astronomy class who is walking around campus tonight?
If you think findning new friends through mobile social networking is the stuff of science fiction, consider a visit to the blog of one of my favorite futurists in the world of mobile and new media anthropology, Mimi Ito (http://www.itofisher.com/mito/). I discovered her work at a seminar at Berkeley a few years ago and was transported by her description of how Japanese teenagers used cell phone to find each other after school in a busy metroplis. Her premise them was that what Asian adolescents were doing today we’d be doing in the U.S. in a couple of years.
Now a few years later, her predictions are proving she understands how mobile communication is transforming the way we connect. And her global view of this technological evolution has helped me appreciate how the iPhone is just the proverbial tip of the iceberg when it comes to what we’ll soon be doing with mobile devices.
I can’t tell you if http://brightkite.com or http://www.loopt.com/ will be the breakthrough app that makes location-based networking as popular as Twitter or Facebook, but I can definitely predict that the company that finds the right timing, features, and audience (read, marketing plan) is going to be worth investing in.
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I think slowly Asian countries are also getting into the location-based social networking game as everyone thinks that 2010 will be the year for location-based services. Another country following suit is the Philippines, a small start-up has recently launched the Philippines’ first location-based social networking site called “Alooph”, it mirrors much of the location services found on other bigger sites. http://aloo.ph