Sharing your location with friends in the past required calling or texting to let them know where you are, with the directions. Nowadays, thanks to our smartphones, location sharing has become very easy. Not only has it become a fun way to share your activities with your peers, location sharing apps have also made it possible for businesses to market their products and services by allowing their customers to geo-tag their location. This also helps them collect location-based content that helps in further refining their marketing campaigns. Astounding Growth in Location-Based Apps A number of companies are investing in development of mobile app based on location to grow their business. The number of location-based applications available on each mobile platform is also increasing considerably. Almost every social application tracks their users’ locations and gives them advertising and marketing content relevant to that place. Location is now embedded in everything an online user does. A trend report by GlobalWebIndex suggests that Tinder, a location-based dating app, is predicted to reach a $1 billion valuation this year, while Momo, a Chinese location-based social app has reported a record-breaking $3 million valuation this year. What originally started as a way to focus on active check-ins, rewards, and recognition has now become one of the strongest tools in location discovery and user interaction. The user’s location has become more than just a wandering blue dot on the street map; it now means the places we go, the people we meet, and the relationships we develop. The Evolution of Location-Based Social Apps The most recent development in location-based apps is the ability to navigate the environment. Locations help in discovering useful information about our friends and colleagues nearby that readily connects us with them and fosters new relationships based on shared locations and likes. Location based apps such as Yik Yak, Twitter, Swarm, Foursquare, and Circle have already been compiling content based on proximity. Last year, Foursquare, one of the earliest location based social apps, announced that they would launch a new platform for discovering nearby friends and seeing who is up to what. The Foursquare app would focus on check-ins, earning badges, and finding a good place to have dinner, but the Swarm app would focus entirely on the social element. As geo-tagged information is becoming more readily available, location-based apps have also entered the realm of journalism. Apps like Banjo, Sonar, and Geofeedia are designed to help journalists find stories, new ideas, develop new sources, and track news events through posts from the scenes. Vyclone, an iPhone app, takes video clips of events and turns them into video footage, covering that event. What's Next? The recent trend in location-based apps highlights the importance of location data for ad-targeting and consumer marketing. This indicates why some large platforms like Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft are rushing to strike licensing deals with smaller, location-based mobile platforms. This year, as more and more predictions by IT Gurus about the trends in location-based apps are coming true, it is expected that location-based, social, and mobile commerce solutions will become even more popular. This would help businesses increase their profitability by letting users know about special discounts, deals, and the availability of limited stock items around them. Based on this, a plethora of new social apps will likely hit the mainstream as the time passes. Is your business using location-based services to communicate special deals to customers? Is your application tapping into the potential that location-based social interaction and mobile commerce can offer? Let us know in the comments below, and thanks for reading! Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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