Location based services (LBS) are one of the hottest trends in web and mobile application development. These services allow users to find friends and businesses based on geographical location. Some examples of these networks include foursquare and loopt.
For a while, Google has had its own LBS service: Google Latitude. While this isn’t news, today Google announced the addition of some great new features to bring Latitude up to par with its competitors. New features include location history, and location based alerts.
Location history allows the user to store all of their past locations, and will use that information to re-create journeys the user has taken via Google Maps. If you backpack through Europe, you can track the route you took based on times you’ve arrived in different locations.
Google location alerts sends you notifications when your friends are nearby, based on email or SMS. The new feature is personalized too, it won’t notify you when you’re at a place you normally visit (i.e. it won’t tell you when co-workers are around, so you can avoid having your phone go off 50 times while you’re at work everyday) but it will tell you if they’re around when you’re at a normal place at an unusual time (i.e the gym at midnight)
Technology is always changing, and bigger companies are working hard to keep their existing client base. Email providers like hotmail, and Yahoo lost a large amount of their userbase (and thereby a lot of traffic to their sites) when gmail came out. Google offered newer, better technology that was useful to the user, and they kept innovating to make that technology better while the other guys sat on their laurels and continued to lose their userbase. So what can the small business owner learn from all this?
- It’s important to innovate. Growth, even for small businesses relies on a growing client base. Keep your client base growing by putting your business out there. Invest in a professional web presence.
- Get your business seen. Just having a web presence isn’t enough. You need to make sure that it gets seen. Investing in Search Engine Marketing and Search engine optimization will keep your web presence high in search engine rankings and bring you more clients.
Possibly Related Posts:
- Facebook Addresses Privacy Concerns
- Living With Your Website
- Monitizing the News
- Social Recruiting
- Artists in Public View and on the Net
