Perhaps you would have heard that Facebook users are now in excess of 500million; that is about 30% of internet population using the service. As far as the internet is concern, Facebook is a force to be recon with. The almighty Google has been finding ways to get into the terrain, but the more they tried the farther they seem to be from the social part of the web. Remember failed Wave and shadow buzz projects?  But Google Me is in the works!

Places and other LBS

In what experts has deemed inevitable, Facebook announced its grand entrance into the location base game with its Facebook Places product on Wednesday. The product is meant to help users “check-in” to places they visit and share it amongst their friends. A special feature that’s way different from others is its Friend place-tagging. That is you can tag your friends in the same place and share with others (without them necessarily approving the tag).

The leader in this field before now is Foursquare with almost 3million users; but with the entrance of Facebook; Foursquare and other players are now shivering, thinking if the giant will crush them!  With the entrance of Facebook, LBS services will effectively be moved to the mainstream. Foursquare recorded its highest signup on Thursday, the day after Facebook announced the product. Other players in the market include; Gowalla, Loopt and a host of others.

This service is currently not available in Nigeria on all the platforms, while Facebook Places is only available in the US for now!

Hyper-local and social networking

It’s important that social networks tap into your emotions, keep you connected (and engaged or waste your time as the case may be) to your friends. The more they know where you and your friends are, the better for them to be able to get you talking and share stuffs! Your data are constantly being recorded to effectively do this.

For businesses, it allows them to be able to track those who visit their shops, how frequent they visit, and how they buy their products. This is one of the selling points of Yelp and other services. With Check-ins, businesses can offer promotions to customers who visit often and those who rate them well.

Privacy and the future

The earlier we wake up to the reality of privacy the better for us; if there is anything as realistic about privacy is the one sure thing that… it is DEAD! Privacy is long dead since we started using the internet, the advent of social networks only dig the grave to bury it! As far as you have your data online, forget about privacy, as far as you sign up for a service, forget about privacy. You definitely aren’t in control of your privacy haven shared it online. The only way to keep your privacy intact is to stay off technology as in; don’t use cell phones, internet, social networks, credit card and other stuff! Avoiding all these in most cases aren’t possible in our world!

So remember that your privacy is only guaranteed by the number of personal data you share online!

I dreamed of a future where somehow, we would have access to people all around the world on a giant screen, seeing what they are doing, where they are and all that stuff! Day after day, we are moving towards the reality, tracking system is the making! Privacy issue has hindered Governments effort to really serve as Big Brother, tracking everyone wherever they go. With the Location Based Services, users are willingly churning out the data! Service providers can easily aggregate the data, and do an analysis of your life pattern. With these services, in the future you can easily tame a potential terrorist or notorious people in town.

What is prize being fought over?

The prevailing system on the internet is Capitalism, for every businesses running online, they are motivated by profit, forget about cliché “… we help you share with your friends”, “Don’t be evil” and all that. If a company is not profitable it’s a matter of time it will close shop. So you really want to ask why all the fuse about location service?

Profit.Profit.Profit

There are no two words to it! The better an internet service is able to track your activities, the better their ad-targeting performs. With that in mind they can easily serve their customers (advertisers)! Imagine working on a street downtown, as soon as you get into the street, ads flash on your phone saying, “Buy Heineken, half the price: Foobar just 5 blocks away”, or “New arrivals, 30% off for first 20 customers, 10 to go!, Shop 345, adjacent to you”. These ads aren’t just coming to you because you are on the street but because the platform knows that you like Heineken or that you like shopping! If an ad system performs in this manner, advertisers will sell more and consequently place more ads!

The battle has just begun, the future is still unfolding, LBS hyper-local is the future!  Expect the location battle to get fiercer as services after service comes out.