Location-based services include geosocial services, geoadvertising, and geoinformation services. Seventy-four percent of smartphone owners use location- based services. What ties these activities together and is the foundation for mobile commerce is global positioning system (GPS) enabled map services
available on smartphones. A geosocial service can tell you where your friends are meeting. Geoadvertising services can tell you where to find the nearest Italian restaurant, and geoinformation services can tell you the price of a house you are looking at, or about special exhibits at a museum you are passing. Wikitude.me is an example of a geoinformation service. Wikitude.me provides a special kind of browser for smartphones equipped with a built-in GPS and compass that can identify your precise location and where the phone is pointed. Using information from over 800,000 points of interest available on Wikipedia, plus thousands of other local sites, the browser overlays information about points of interest you are viewing, and displays that information on your smartphone screen, superimposed on a map or photograph that you just snapped. For example, users can point their smartphone cameras towards mountains from a tour bus and see the names and heights of the mountains displayed on the screen. Wikitude.me also allows users to geo-tag the world around them, and then submit the tags to Wikitude in order to share content with other users.
Foursquare, Gowalla (now owned by Facebook), Loopt, and new offerings by Facebook and Google are examples of geosocial services. Geosocial services help you find friends, or be found by your friends, by “checking in” to the service, announcing your presence in a restaurant or other place. Your friends are instantly notified. About 20 percent of smartphone owners use geosocial services. The popularity of specialized sites like Foursquare has waned as Facebook and Google+ have moved into geosocial services and turned them into extensions of their larger social networks.
Loopt has 5 million users in 2012. The service doesn’t sell information to advertisers, but does post ads based on user location. Loopt’s target is to deal with advertisers at the walking level (within 200 to 250 meters). Foursquare provides a similar location-based social networking service to 22 million registered users, who may connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for checking in at designated venues. Users choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or both. Users also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for the time of check-in. More than 500,000 local merchants worldwide use the merchant platform for marketing.
Connecting people to local merchants in the form of geoadvertising is the economic foundation for mobile commerce. Mobile advertising in 2012 will reach $2.6 billion in 2012. Geoadvertising sends ads to users based on their GPS locations. Smartphones report their locations back to Google and Apple. Merchants buy access to these consumers when they come within range of a merchant. For instance, Kiehl Stores, a cosmetics retailer, sent special offers and announcements to customers who came within 100 yards of their store (eMarketer, 2012).
Foursquare, Gowalla (now owned by Facebook), Loopt, and new offerings by Facebook and Google are examples of geosocial services. Geosocial services help you find friends, or be found by your friends, by “checking in” to the service, announcing your presence in a restaurant or other place. Your friends are instantly notified. About 20 percent of smartphone owners use geosocial services. The popularity of specialized sites like Foursquare has waned as Facebook and Google+ have moved into geosocial services and turned them into extensions of their larger social networks.
Loopt has 5 million users in 2012. The service doesn’t sell information to advertisers, but does post ads based on user location. Loopt’s target is to deal with advertisers at the walking level (within 200 to 250 meters). Foursquare provides a similar location-based social networking service to 22 million registered users, who may connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for checking in at designated venues. Users choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or both. Users also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for the time of check-in. More than 500,000 local merchants worldwide use the merchant platform for marketing.
Connecting people to local merchants in the form of geoadvertising is the economic foundation for mobile commerce. Mobile advertising in 2012 will reach $2.6 billion in 2012. Geoadvertising sends ads to users based on their GPS locations. Smartphones report their locations back to Google and Apple. Merchants buy access to these consumers when they come within range of a merchant. For instance, Kiehl Stores, a cosmetics retailer, sent special offers and announcements to customers who came within 100 yards of their store (eMarketer, 2012).
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