Maybe I'm too old to "get it" or maybe it's because I'm not in an urban area, but I really don't see the value-add in location-based social networks. I use Twitter a lot and I use Facebook a good amount. How does adding a location component improve the overall experience for me?
It doesn't.
I already know when my close friends are in town or out of town. If I want to know what they're doing on a Saturday night, I'll text them. It's 5x faster than launching an app and looking for their marker on a map.
Oh, and that chunk of the population that–like me–are married and have children ... I don't need a Gowalla or Foursquare to tell me where they are. They're most likely at work or at home. And they're using Facebook to connect with their friends–because their location doesn't matter.
You can argue that they just "need to gain traction" or "need to grow faster", but maybe the answer to this title is that they simply aren't any more useful than Facebook.
Location-based services are great for local commerce, probably great for dating, maybe handy at large events/conferences, but for basic social networking ... meh.
Among the problems I see with most of these services is that they don't provide anything meaningful to socialize about that is unique to mobile and location based data. For general social banter, facebook seems to have won the turf. To your point, if you're no longer in the hooking up or carousing with friends demo, these apps have seemingly nothing for you.
All that said, I think there's tremendous value potential for overlapping virtual and physical communities. I just think all of these players have been too early and lacking imagination to strike a hit. Now that location aware devices are nearly ubiquitous, the next steps are commodifying and standardizing location data, APIs, etc. It seems inevitable. If there's anything that's going to yank me from consulting/contracting back into full-time startup hackery, it'll be something along these lines.
It's very early days, expect this to explode somewhere in the next two years. The people that are using this now are the early adopters. It's like in-car navigation, or CD players, a mobile phone or a facebook account.
Like that you have a 'novelty' and people argue if it is even useful and like that everybody has one.
I installed Loopt on my iPhone when it was launched more than a year ago. I stopped using it soon after, since none of my Facebook friends or Gmail contacts were on it. Now it has more than a million users, so last week I installed it again — along with several other apps — but I didn’t have much luck this time either.
...illustrates why we need to open up the social graph. It's stupid that every new social feature or business has to build its own registration, friending mechanics, etc., or consent to live in a walled garden of one proprietary social network. Brad Fitzpatrick (of LiveJournal fame, now at Google) has long promoted this idea, e.g. see http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/ . Unfortunately it's still very much an open problem. OpenID is one piece of the puzzle, but the rest is still missing.
I'm kinda sorta looking into writing Facebook apps right now, and can vouch that I'd be much less reluctant to dive in if the platform were open.
Uh, that sounds like a privacy nightmare. Well, one could argue that existing social networks are already a nightmare, I guess. So much of the damage is already done.
Why couldn't an open system allow for different profiles? E.g. personal, professional and public. Facebook has started to get the right idea with its lists feature - but there needs to be far more control - a completely separate profile, option to target statuses to certain groups etc.
Inevitably the solution will be a decentralised social network which other providers can tap into - core functionality such as profiles (and location?) should be as portable as a wordpress blog: either I get someone else to host it or I host it myself.
I think one problem is that users want more than just share and hide information selectively. I want each of my "friends" to believe that I share everything with them because they are soooo super special.
If my "friends" know that I'm hiding something from them, they feel bad, and they may not be my "friends" for much longer.
But is that true of business contacts, casual aquaintances? Some guy who's going to sublet your apartment while you're on sabbatical?
I would hope that my friends don't feel left out if they aren't getting my complete output stream. If someone did, I would find it odd and possibly creepy depending on the context.
I agree that in many cases it shouldn't be a problem. But if everyone has one or two real friends who might be disappointed, that's enough to destroy the idea.
But it probably depends on whether people use social networks for managing a broad range of contacts or to keep in touch with close friends and family.
The general problem is that some things can change dramatically as soon as they become explicit, even when nothing of substance has changed.
There's a certain amount of overhead and risk in that. What if I "friend" someone from work and forget to file them in the right group on Facebook? Whereas I know that there are things I would simply never ever say in my LinkedIn status, let alone post those photos...
I think that the location based networks are probably growing how you'd expect.
The exemplary demographic willing to have their location disclosed (with the biggest upside from doing so) is the 16-25 year old groups of mutual friends that live close together.
I'd expect the adoption rate to grow over time, but not as quickly as the more anonymous social networks.
Because these apps all started with the idea: Location based mobile advertising is going to huge. I gotta get me some of that. Hmmm. Hey, social networks are big...what if we do a location based social network?
The problem is, it is a stupid damn idea. I mean, think about it. Not only do most of your friends need to be using Loopt (or whatever) they have to be at about the same place at about the same time, but not so close that you an already see eachother. There are just too damn many things that have to line up.
So, it is no surprise that they are trying to loosen constraints. Most of them ditched the time constraint earlier this year. The focus moved from meeting up to sharing experiences. They've also been ditching the constraint that you already need to know someone else using the service. Loopt Mix is about meeting new people.
The why may be a matter of whether you own a smart phone or not. People tend to have more desktops/laptops than smart phones. I believe most location based networks rely on smart phones capabilities. For example before I didn't have an iPhone, so I didn't have a loopt account, now that I have an iPhone I use loopt. Other social networks are easily accessible with either phones or computers therefore a greater user market.
There was a post recently about how hotmail took off. My friend in SF could email me here in Australia and hotmail would instantly be useful. Location stuff like this fails for that reason. What value do I have in being the first one in my city to adopt it. See also: Craigslist - anywhere but the few cities it dominates in.
Im very surprised, that people fail to see Yelp mobile as a location based service. Their location based services, finding restaurants and reviews are probably the most I use right now. GraffitiGeo ( purchased by loopt, and y comp), offers almost the same feature set as Yelp as well. Just wondering what is the distinction ?
Its strange .. Social networks like Facebook, orkut have a very high share in mobile internet usage...But still the growth of Location based mobile networking seems to be not that high...I would still expect there will be growth once there is heavy integration of the app with local information,deals etc..
Most of these apps seem to be based on the idea that an individual is in a location with no predefined plans/destination and a lack of familiarity with the area. Sounds great for travel but in my everyday life that's just not a realistic problem.
Without widespread adoption these apps aren't very useful. But I don't see that they are able to convince people to sign up very effectively. A lot of people don't have capable devices yet, either.
It doesn't.
I already know when my close friends are in town or out of town. If I want to know what they're doing on a Saturday night, I'll text them. It's 5x faster than launching an app and looking for their marker on a map.
Oh, and that chunk of the population that–like me–are married and have children ... I don't need a Gowalla or Foursquare to tell me where they are. They're most likely at work or at home. And they're using Facebook to connect with their friends–because their location doesn't matter.
You can argue that they just "need to gain traction" or "need to grow faster", but maybe the answer to this title is that they simply aren't any more useful than Facebook.
Location-based services are great for local commerce, probably great for dating, maybe handy at large events/conferences, but for basic social networking ... meh.