by D. Sproul | June 18th, 2010
You already know about Facebook and Twitter, that let you tell your friends what you’re doing. Now there are websites that will mark your location using your cell phone or other wireless device. Twitter has added “geolocation” function to their website, and other large websites include GoWalla, FourSquare, Rummble, and Google’s Latitude and Buzz. Here’s a recent article about it from the London Telegraph. Apparently, if you check in enough times to FourSquare, you can own that location, and be named “mayor.” And I just read an article that talks about Facebook adding geolocation to their website. The article talks about Facebook protecting privacy and already having a large user base, which would benefit their installing geolocation and winning this new tech race. (Most average people may not have even heard of GoWalla, FourSquare, and Rummble.) However, I have to disagree with the writer here. In the past several months Facebook has had several privacy issues, including their beginning to sell user data to show targeted ads, and their switching their privacy setting from need to opt-in, to need to opt-out of this feature (with little warning to users). Its also really hard to find the setting at all. I even heard a 20-something complain about them directly, and talk about not using it anymore. Watch out, Facebook.
The most interesting thing to me is the possibility of geo-targeted ads. You could possibly target someone within a two mile radius of a shop, and get them to visit. And now proof that it geo-targeted ads work: our family was in Barnes & Noble, where the Nook e-book reader gets free wifi, and can browse the entire text of every book in the store. We were sitting at Starbucks, when my husband received a coupon for the very Starbucks he was sitting in.
We will also have to see how the technology pans out in another arena: privacy and public safety. A large portion of cell phone users are minors. If they post where they are, will people they don’t know be able to read their message too, or just the people who are signed up as “friends.” Time will tell.