Despite the controversy surrounding Foursquare and the likes still heating up - see PleaseRobMe.com coverage in the news i.e. is it really a good idea to broadcast to the world the fact that you are not home for an extended period of time? - more established social tools are adding rushing to add geolocation to their arsenal of capabilities.
With SXSW just around the corner, the timing is crucial and everybody is in the starting blocks, from Twitter to Facebook.
So what is the real motivation behind this new trend? Of course there is the goal to create a more appealing experience for users: the social factor aspect -seeing where your friends are, sharing tips on places, getting local news about what is happening around you- as well as the fun aspect like with Foursquare points system that gets you free stuff. But I suspect that interesting and entertaining users is just the tip of the iceberg.
The real money to be made here is in geolocated, real time and (more or less) relevant to your interests, advertisement. Isn't that every marketer dream to be able to talk to you about her offer just when you are thinking about it and happen to be close to it?
So that will probably be the price to pay to use these services: accept to be the target of personalized advertisement. But then again, aren't we getting increasingly trained to ignore those, therefore pushing marketers to find new ways to get our attention and pushing further the technology.
But the beauty of it all is that users seem to be far from passive spectators and always find ways to high-jack these new capabilities for their own benefit: think Twitter becoming a local information leader or crowdfunding.
Visit www.brainpickings.org for a good article about the crowdfunding landscape.
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