« A Day of Character(s) and iRony | Main | The Real Break Up of the Bell System »
January 16, 2007
Social Networking - People Like Mobile [PLM]?
Per Gartner (via the WSJ) 63% of mobile phones sold in North America in 2007 will have Global Positions Systems [GPS]. Doing a back of the napkin SWAG on FCC reports that means that over a third of the market (over 70M US phones) are ready for GPS applications.
But who is in this third of the market. The industry seems to indicate the answer is the youth.
Look at the technology from Loopt, available from Boost Mobile. I can tell from their web site that it is not looking for People Like Me [PLM]. This is a location based service to find friends that has over 100,000 users (per the WSJ).
Sprint’s has a service called Family Locator which is closer to my needs.
But the majority of these applications are for a younger market like the spread of services on Helio and Rave Wireless.
Other services such as Socialight may or may not hit me demographically. I am very friendly with Ed Pimentel who has built the application Googaya. Underneath Googaya are some interesting tools for someone who wants to build more than a front end into other peoples solutions.
I guess my fear is abuse. If I am okay seeing “People Like Me”, I wonder if other people I am seeing like me, or like me too much, or....
You get the idea. Its cool technology but I am not sure I trust everyone who is going to use it. If I have my concerns, you can bet there are plenty of people like me. ;<)
Posted by carl at January 16, 2007 09:51 AM