Who is excited about geolocation? Turns out, it’s more than just us local media geeks and tech-heads. Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb posted an interesting roundup last week with poets, comedians, musicians and educators (plus a few tech-heads) offering their thoughts and hopes for the location-based services that are coming our way. Publishers should take note, too.
Kevin Marshall of Hive Mind offers the most relevant view for local media: “If I know 5 people that love coffee – I would love to see what’s the place they all frequent the most. This sort of data just isn’t available right now…but hopefully it’s on its way.”
When you think about the kind of recommendation-based information available by the service that can truly unlock location-based activity (like Foursqaure) and combine it with a mainstream social network (like Facebook), there is going to be a gold mine of data for local marketers.
Kirkpatrick also weighs in and offers the most astute analysis, in response to an educator’s excitement over using LBS in curriculum to get students outside and exploring (emphasis added):
We need to make our world mashable. This whole concept of hardlinking extends to GPS and Geolocation. So, this is the next major growth of the Internet as the Internet becomes a hardlinked network which incorporates the objects and locations in our daily life. And we have to empower students with handhelds that have these capabilities and are incorporating an excellent curriculum. Most publishers aren’t thinking this way, but need to. This is the great thing about having open educational resources – we can all build on our piece of it.
If publishers expect to play in this space, they need to be preparing their content (news and advertising) to be location-aware. Whether partnering with an outside technology provider or utilizing already available technology (many CMS platforms have the ability to locate content but the fields in the database are empty), it’s important to be able to serve content and advertising to your audience based on location. If you have have the information in your system, it becomes a simple database transaction.
Not to be outdone, Baratunde Thurston, Web Editor at The Onion, had this to offer: “The creative opportunities are also fun. I’ve left a bunch of easter egg “tips” in Foursquare and have a bunch more hijinks planned. Geo-targeted comedy is the future.”
Recent geolocation news:
- What’s Next For Geolocation? Apps, Apps, Apps (ReadWriteWeb)
- Google Buzz: The Mainstream’s Geo-Social Network? (ReadWriteWeb)
- E-mail Marketers Want a Piece of Geolocation, Too (Mashable)