How Mobile GPS and Location Based Information In Social Media Is Changing The Way Business Connects With Customers

GPS-aware mobile devices have become commonplace, making connecting the dots between what you’re doing and where you’re doing it easy. Now that businesses are actively exploring the opportunities that location-aware services provide, location will matter more than ever.

Everyone is Sharing Location Based Information

This year, Twitter, Foursquare, Loopt, Gowalla, Google and Facebook will all make it easier for people to share real-time, location based information and post location-aware updates.

This past December, on Christmas day Facebook was the most trafficked web site in the United States. Now it wants all of it’s users to become more open. Altering the default settings on millions of people’s status updates, in the hopes of making more Facebook updates public and searchable.

Get Ready for Location-Aware Status Updates

Sometime later this year Facebook will start to implement opt-in location-aware status updates. Knowing where your Facebook friends are having lunch or going for a run is a just as important, if not more so, than knowing that they’re doing it. So in much the same way that Foursquare shows you check-ins from friends and people checked in at events, Facebook will provide context around status updates in the wild, but on a much broader scale.

The social element of this voluntary disclosure allows marketers to tap into an engaged network of users and offer special promotions based on reported location. We expect FourSquare and other apps with a hybrid location/social-networking component to grow significantly in 2010.

Geo-Targeted Marketing

As the number of GPS-enabled devices continues to rise, expect to see a variety of innovative marketing solutions created to facilitate geo-targeting (i.e. in-aisle, in-store or in-proximity) and automated direct-marketing campaigns that are pushed to consumers with GPS-enabled mobile devices.

Business Will Capitalize on Location-Based Services

With the growth of location-based services and mobile apps, business now has the chance to minutely target consumers.

Of course this explosion of location based information will no doubt lead to main stream media stories of location-sharing gone wrong and will be used as cautionary tales for those who live their lives too openly. But once people begin to understand the value of connecting through location, more and more local business will capitalize on location-based services on social networks and mobile devices.