Friend Finder, LBS Based Social Networking and the Location Innovation Awards

One of the applications that many organisations have seen as major opportunities for LBS application development is the concept or Friend or Buddy Finder. The most common concept is which of my friends are nearby, but it can also lead to finding new friends of similar interests. This concept offers lots of opportunities to come up with an entry for the GeoSmart Location Innovation Awards.

One application that seems to do this quite well is Mobiluck. Mobiluck is a mobile social networking application which allows you to see where your friends are and let them know where you are. It can send you free SMS alerts when a friend is nearby. I don’t know if it is free everywhere in the world, I’d be surprised if the New Zealand telcos allowed any SMS to slip through without getting some revenue from them.  Like all good social networking sites it lets you make new friends. It is free because it is supported by advertising and with almost half a million users, I suspect it is proving itself to be an app that people want to use. When I looked at the application, it knew from my IP Address (I’m assuming that’s how it worked because I hadn’t yet entered any data). It also supports multiple languages and gives you the ability to decide how much profile information to share. They are working on getting establishments such as restaurants and bars to get involved in the network as Points of Interest to make it easy for people to let their friends know where they are and invite them to join them.

Japan pioneered a system of proximity based dating several years ago which was an instant hit, Korea followed quickly thereafter. You could set your criteria of the person you were looking for and would get a message when someone that matched your interests were nearby. The first devices were simple Bluetooth Devices specifically designed for the purpose and as you walked past a person who was a match, your devicee would beep. Now off course the technology is cellular and uses GPS and SMS as the key enablers. I’m not sure that culturally this would work so well in the Western world, but given that dating sites are amongst the most popular on the web, I could well be wrong.

Car Navigation won’t be left out. My TomTom GO720 has Buddy Finder technology. I use my navigation unit as my hands free car kit so it is already paired through Bluetooth to my phone. Any friends who also do the same with their unit have the option of allowing me to see where they are on a map in real time. This is a great tool if you are travelling to a location. Let’s say I was on my way to the Big Day Out and I was going to meet a friend outside and go in together. Let’s say one of us finds enough car parking for 2 cars, I could spot exactly where they are on my unit and grab the other park. This would also be a lot of fun on car rallys and other events. Of course you don’t have to be driving either. You could even create a proximity game using phones and TomToms.

Another interesting service is navmii from GeoLife.It operates in a Windows Mobile environment with GPS. You can find people or allow them to find you and they can then see you on a map and get driving directions on how to find you. You can see an example below. They are also planning new related products including GeoFamily and GeoPet. The latter 2 I’m sure would be very popular. GeoFamily means that you can make sure your children are safe and know where they are, another aspect which has been very popular in one of my own blogs is using GPS to keep track of elderly family members, especially those who may have memory problems or suffer from Alzheimers or another form of dementia, who get themselves lost and don’t remember where to go. Another popular aspect is when elderly people are away from their homes and are injured or need medical assistance. Current solutions tend only to work within a close radius of their homes. You can find more information on my other blog about this.