I agree 100% with this article. Keeping track of your location will be a commodity very soon.
In one or two years, there will be open standards for sending your location to the person your talking to, sending it to a contact, and broadcasting it. Handset vendors will implement those standards. If they are nice they will provide API hooks to let application act on the sending/reception of location information. The same thing will happen with status messages (Twitter and Facebook) and other activity streaming stuff.
It could happen a lot faster if carriers built these protocols on top of text messaging (probably using a special kind of service message) to drive further adoption of unlimited messaging packages.
The business model is clear. The mobile phone operators will implement it so you have an incentive to buy the next generation of phones. The carriers will implement it because adding the feature to your phone bill is basically free money for them. Users will pay for it because they are used to paying for phones and phone services, and because it is more convenient than dealing with all these social networking plays.
Independent social networks won't make any money because tiny classified ads don't work in social networking, and besides location-based advertising will be bundled into the user's mapping/searching software (Google Maps Mobile, Nokia Maps, and similar). Users won't pay directly for social networking because traditionally it has always been free.
In one or two years, there will be open standards for sending your location to the person your talking to, sending it to a contact, and broadcasting it. Handset vendors will implement those standards. If they are nice they will provide API hooks to let application act on the sending/reception of location information. The same thing will happen with status messages (Twitter and Facebook) and other activity streaming stuff.
It could happen a lot faster if carriers built these protocols on top of text messaging (probably using a special kind of service message) to drive further adoption of unlimited messaging packages.
The business model is clear. The mobile phone operators will implement it so you have an incentive to buy the next generation of phones. The carriers will implement it because adding the feature to your phone bill is basically free money for them. Users will pay for it because they are used to paying for phones and phone services, and because it is more convenient than dealing with all these social networking plays.
Independent social networks won't make any money because tiny classified ads don't work in social networking, and besides location-based advertising will be bundled into the user's mapping/searching software (Google Maps Mobile, Nokia Maps, and similar). Users won't pay directly for social networking because traditionally it has always been free.