The NY Times today highlighted an emerging issue that can be central to development in mobile local search - in the article “Privacy Lost: These Phones Can Find You“. No big surprises or revelations for those who spend time thinking about GPS-enabled applications, but it highlights the challenges of this dual-edged sword of opportunity and problem.
the “following app”
In the formative days of Jabber, I had the good fortune of having an advisory team from places like MIT media labs & Disney Imagineering - we spent a bunch of time brainstorming this space. Luckily, in 2000, we concluded the time wasn’t upon us! The core value proposition, however, is very powerful - very personal and very real world. Applications can be constructed from the intersection of location-based presence and buddy/address lists. The NYT article gives some good following app examples, and this “friend finder” space is ripe with innovation today.
the live social geo-graph
There is much buzz around the construct of the social graph - the traced connections of you and your friends, colleagues and acquaintances. The blog energy seems to be centered on FaceBook and online networks. However, I’d suggest that mobile based social connections, with the emerging dimension of location (via gps) + presence /availability combine to form a powerful and very personal live social geo-graph. The IM and phone-based buddy list/address book is arguably the real-time social map to your daily life. Which, by nature, makes it highly interesting for local search.
carrier, search or ?
By virtue of their network ownership, the carrier is ideally positioned to take the concept of location and presence and turn up a suite of capabilities in social mobile applications that could ultimately make, as msearchgroove suggests, “mobile search passe”. However, as NY Times highlights, the big brother brand challenge has them shuddering in their boots. It’s a VERY fragile topic - balancing application value with personal creepiness!
The search industry certainly has its eye squarely on this ball. However, I’d suggest that the big search brands, particularly Google and MS, are careening towards the same big brother problem as they become pervasive in the consumers online life and tackle the agenda of personalized search. An interesting related announcement today from AOL Mobile, with their push into “geo-presence” services with MapQuest, Mail and MovieFone.
Ultimately, there may be an app, or a suite of apps that get us over this tipping point and the “social geo-graph” will be opened up by the consumer. My hunch is this privacy problem will only be solved by application value. Today, it’s still a careful fragile dance.
