The future of social is local

People often ask what the future of social media is and words like ‘web 3.0′ get thrown around in excitement without anyone (myself included) really knowing what it means. From what I can see, the future of social media lies in geo-location technology.

Twitter have recently announced that they’re close to a full public roll-out of their location tagging of tweets. The service will add longitude and latitude data to your tweets, putting a small red pin on a map alongside your updates. Crucially, the service will be opt-in, which will allay any fears over privacy and security. Geolocation apps do exist already but reviews are fairly uncomplimentary.

Basically, Twitter’s geolocation tagging means that you can find people near you who are tweeting and read their updates.

Nokia have also just announced a new location based service, that’s a clear swipe at Google Maps. They’ve recently launched their Good Things map on the Ovi system. The map allows you to search for recommended bars, restaurants etc.. as well as submitting your own ‘good things’. The application works by Ovi map users installing a browser plugin that will add an extra tab, allowing you to submit your favourite spots and reviews.

There’s also an impressive launch planned for London later in the year, with giant signposts being put up throughout the city. The signs will display the latest ‘good things’ submitted, through a live feed. There is a need to drive the crowd-sourcing that’s central to the success of the project and local promotion is key.

That’s 2 services that have launched just this weekend that demonstrate the shift to location based services. Talk around geotargeted social media applications seems to have been around for a while, but I’m starting to see a real shift now in that area and I think we can expect to see a lot of mind-blowing products launched as we seek increasingly tailored information.

The shift to location based services also has interesting implications for the ‘community’ aspect of social media. The tools of online originally removed any geographical boundaries and meant that we could have a close-knit community that was spread all over the world. It seems that now though, there is a desire for localised information and communities. We want more and more information that’s generated by the individual user and we’re seeking more real-life connections. You only have to look to ‘tweet-ups’ for a working example of this.

What will be interesting to see is how we adapt our thinking in terms of privacy. Will be willing to open up our Twitter account to geo-tagging or will concerns about privacy of data override? As social media users we are certainly becoming more savvy and open to sharing information, which suggest that concerns such as these will soon be a thing of the past.

Foursquare is rapidly growing in popularity and is regularly touted as the next big contender to Twitter. Foursquare works through your mobile and allows you to connect with your friends and explore your city in a whole new way. Users build up points by ‘checking in’ to different parts of a city. While the game is proving popular, it’s still relatively stuck in the ‘early adopter’ phase, though the recent addition of Vancouver as the first Canadian city in the game was wildly popular.

Augmented reality applications also have a key part to play in the evolution of location based services. The video below gives an impressive look  into what we can expect to see in the coming months..

It’s easy to see how geolocation services can really take off, especially as Foursquare works by connecting you with friends, as opposed to people you haven’t met. There is still a lot of learning to be done on the mass consumer side before services like this become mainstream, but I’m certainly watching the LBS space with interest.   Like mobile internet, I think it had its first wave that didn’t quite take off (see Google Latitude) but we are about to see it taken to a whole new level and I’m sure mainstream adoption won’t be too far off.