Location: Are we there yet?

Mobile, location-based services will change everything, but just later on everything changes

Contributing Columnist, Computerworld |

Friends, family and loved ones volition shortly gather to share that most cherished of annual American traditions: Getting drunk, pigging out and watching behemothic men try to impale each other on Tv set.

Super Basin Lord's day is as well that special twenty-four hour period when we run into brand-new, big-budget commercials. But if you're a existent sports fan, you'll notice that lineup of products advertised will be generally dissimilar from those hawked during regular-flavor games. Super Bowl ads involve mainstream products, including movies, financial services and Web hosting services. But during the regular season, the ads are all selling beer, motor oil and tires. Why is that?

Advertisers know that the demographic of the Super Bowl is much broader than that of the fans who scout football all season long. They assume, correctly, that existent football fans are very likely to exist American men who drink a lot of beer and who care very much nearly branding when it comes to motor oil and tires. Of all that "demographic data," location is admittedly vital. For instance, the motor oil and tire commercials would make sense to an audience of football watchers in Saudi arabia -- if Saudis watched football in pregnant numbers, which they don't -- merely the beer companies would exist wasting their money.

Advertising professionals have ever obsessed over "location data." That'southward why everybody wants your Nil code. Every time you sign upwards for anything anywhere, they want that Cipher code because, combined with gender and age, the Zero code tells advertisers quite a lot almost yous. For starters, people within specific ZIP codes tend to have roughly like income levels. Once they know that, they can guess what kinds of things you do, and what sorts of things you buy. They know the local weather, for example (no need to advertise ski equipment to people in Texas). They know what stores are available to you. They tin can even guess your political and religious affiliations with surprising accuracy. The amount of valuable data near people that can exist gleaned from a unproblematic ZIP code is enormous.

The future of advertizement is the application of ever more accurate, more specific targeting of prospective customers. Advertisers desire to know everything almost you lot, including what your make preferences are, your habits, your income and more. Simply most of all, they want your location. Not just your ZIP code. Not but the neighborhood you're living in. They want to know exactly, precisely where yous are at all times. That way, they tin can make you offers that are perfectly relevant to you, correct here, right now.

Advertisers are collecting data about you already, especially your buying patterns, from Amazon.com, Facebook, Gmail and other online services. Amazon.com was a pioneer in this area. Even 10 years ago, information technology was sending me e-mails suggesting books that were exactly the kinds of books I was interested in.

And advertisers will somewhen get your location from your prison cell phone's built-in GPS. Only when?

Why we aren't there withal

If y'all expect closely enough, you can run into companies and users alike dancing around the periphery of total location sharing. Anybody is dipping their toes in the water, but nobody's jumping in even so.

Apple notified iPhone app developers this week, for example, that the utilise of the iPhone Bone'due south "Cadre Location" framework was allowed only to provide data "beneficial" to the utilize. Specifically, the visitor said, "if your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Shop Review Squad for modification earlier it tin can be posted to the App Store."

Apple was likewise granted a patent this week for location sharing engineering science. The arrangement would enable ane caller to request some other's location, and for permission to be granted, with one push push each. Merely and so far that technology has not even been appear for any real product.

Google rolled out "click to phone call" functionality for ads in its mobile version of Google Maps. The service seamlessly uses location information from your phone'south GPS to dial a local, rather than centralized, phone number of a company whose ad you run across on your phone. It lets you call the local store, just it doesn't nonetheless let the store call you.

The "click to telephone call" service comes fast on the heels of Google's "Virtually me now" and "Explore correct here" services, which use location information to tell you what's going on in your area. Just, over again, it's a timid testing of the location waters.

Location-based social services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla, BrightKite, TriOut, Yelp, Loopt, Plazes, Flook and others, use location information to facilitate social interaction, and social interaction to facilitate the discovery of new things.

Most of these services are hobbled by what I perceive as business about location privacy. Some of them are based on location-based status updates, where users tin broadcast their locations if they cull to do and so. Others involve discovery, where people mail something they've seen for others to find in the same location later on.

All these are dancing around the edges of what we really want, which is to exist able to know where all our friends and family are at any time. Nosotros want to be able to "await up" people's locations as easily as we look up their phone number in our accost book. And nosotros want to be able to set upward notifications, so we're alerted when people nosotros care about are nearby.

We desire that real-time information about others. The problem is, do nosotros want others to know where we are?

Resistance is futile

The squeamishness people feel about the privacy incursions by location-based applications is goose egg more than futurity shock. In fact, it has always been pretty easy for strangers to effigy out your location. Telephone books, for example, enable anyone who knows your name to observe out where you sleep at night. Anyone who encounters you at work knows where you'll be most days. Just we don't give these "privacy violations" much thought because they're onetime. We worry just about the new ones.

Most of the states will be willing to hand over our privacy to advertisers on a silver platter for the right incentives. Coin, for example. Cheapskate bargain hunters, coupon clippers and bargain-seekers would happily opt into a system that alerted them to exclusive discounts from stores they happened to exist walking by.

And free is a powerful incentive. Ane could imagine a service totally devoted to free stuff. Whenever someone is offer something gratis (free car wash, free cup of java, free movie tickets) at your location, the telephone rings. For example, just as yous're within 200 yards of a Starbucks offer a complimentary latte, the phone rings to tell you well-nigh information technology. Would yous sign up for that?

Such location-based services could spread airline-like flex pricing across a huge number of industries. For example, equally movie theaters see that seats aren't being filled, they could continue dropping ticket prices every bit the show starting time gets closer, and alert people who have opted in and are also close enough to the theater to make the drapery.

Delight don't think all this is pure speculation. It'southward going to happen. And shortly.

Google, Apple and Twitter are making moves that will likely dorsum their button for location-based advertisement. Google acquired a mobile ad company called AdMob. Apple purchased Quattro Wireless. Twitter caused Mixer Labs.

And it'southward when these major companies jump in that the rest of u.s. will follow. If it plays its cards right, I think Facebook could own this space, mainly because people accept already established closed social networks involving people they've decided to open upward to. We already tell our Facebook friends everything we're doing, ofttimes supplemented with personal pictures and juicy details. Location services simply automate information technology.

Merely let's hear your stance. Where are you on the coming world location services and location-based advertising?

Mike Elgan writes about engineering and global tech culture. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed.

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