The Next Big Question. "Where Are You?" Facebook asks "What's Going On In Your Life?", Twitter asks "What's happening?" and the new services like FourSquare , Gowalla and Rummble ask "Where Are You?" so that you can check in and meet friends at local bars, restaurants, clubs and city centres.
Well just about anywhere. You can use these services on your mobile to find places that are hot and trending. Google released a location based service called Latitude last year and its news social platform Buzz can track locations as well and Twitter has also begun to experiment with geolocation features.
The groundswell is to know where users are is a sign of the importance of the mobile internet which is growing more quickly than desktop usage thanks the availability of the mobile 3G network. At the South by Southwest conference in Texas this week the app of the day was FourSquare and GeoLocation proved to be the hot topic. Both FourSquare and Twitter offer incentives to drive user activity. If you're the most frequent visitor to a location FourSquare lets you become its 'mayor' and many places such as cafes have begun offering discounts to its "mayor". Mobile location is here to stay and can only grow as the proliferation of smartphones continues to grow.