Locassa

The ups and downs of an LBS

Nobody could fail to notice the rise in popularity of location based services, LBS for short, and this is partly due to the coolness factor but also largely due to the emerging capabilities of the latest handsets which now offer users the ability to work with community networking tools and social discovery applications more efficiently than ever before.

So what is so exciting about these LBS's and social discovery tools?

First of all, the exciting aspect of a modern LBS is the close marrying of the handset and technology manufacturers and the innovative software houses producing cutting edge apps to run on them. In fact this is such a close relationship that sometimes it is hard to see who is driving who; what came first the app or the GPS?. What I find exciting about LBS's is the immediacy and relevance of the information I can be provided with, I look at a location aware application and can immediately find information that is not only specific to my current location, but by applying trends to my previous behaviour, it can provide relevant content that it knows I want to see. Interesting stuff!

So what exactly are the differences between social networks and community networks?

Social networks have become diluted and sometimes fairly unsocial places . Lots of people will be asking how sites that promote communication can be unsocial?, well, by taking location out of the equation, they are merely portals for you to syndicate communication and content, usually with little benefit to your social life. A community network employs similar concepts but by forging itself as a LBS and using location as the overriding factor, it allows the syndicated information to be filtered, relevant and useful to people wishing to engage in face-to-face discussions and to actually explore their community in person.

This sounds great but what about privacy?

As anyone who has read about LBS's and community networks will know, privacy is a huge issue, and rightly so. As soon as you bring location into the equation, you are exposing an aspect of yourself that you wouldn't normally expose, especially in an online arena. But, as with many things, you have to give a little to reap the benefit. A good LBS obviously would be pretty useless without the location aspect and so you need to choose carefully which LBS's you wish to use and which you should stay clear of.

What should I look out for when choosing an LBS?

Well for a start, avoid any LBS that doesn't clearly state their privacy rules, what information they collect, how they use it and how you can restrict access to such information. Secondly you should look for systems that have a more granular approach to location usage. What I mean by this are services that treat your location for the purposes of providing you services, and your location for the purposes of sharing with others, as completely different aspects. In many services, your location is only needed to provide you with services you need, however many use your location to help provide the same services to others, and this makes your privacy somewhat vulnerable.

I think LBS's are great, I wouldn't have created one if I didn't. But I also know what it is like as a consumer to worry about the use of my information and the amount of control I have over it. Be careful when you choose your LBS of choice, but do choose one and have some fun with these great new services, I am.