Digitally, Location Is Where It's At

Some companies are just now bolting location awareness onto their existing applications.

Twitter, with 50 million messages a day, introduced a location-awareness function during the conference, while Facebook, with more than 400 million users worldwide, will soon flip the switch for the 100 million or so users who update on smartphones. Yelp, a popular listing of user-generated reviews, has added a check-in feature, and Google just added a widget to its Latitude application that lets you see the location of nearby pals who have enabled the service. Similarly, Apple has applied for patents for iGroup, which will give its iPhone users real-time information on who is nearby. To someone not in their 20s whose location generally isn't that interesting to others the idea of handing over your privacy with both hands to strap on a digital ankle bracelet sounds profoundly unattractive. (I was probably the mayor of taking a disco nap before heading out for another long evening at South by Southwest so I wouldn't keel over.) But to a younger cohort that lives on the grid, the location of people you know and care about is vital information, the coin of the realm. "For many, the benefits of augmented reality outweigh issues of privacy," said Beka Economopoulos of Fission Strategy, a Web development and social media consulting firm for nonprofits. And it often leads to a digitally enabled "lemming effect," she added. Location awareness would only seem to be of use in dense urban areas — in many small towns and suburbs, everyone already knows where everyone else is. But what if location became not just a physical place, but a digital one? The possibilities for old and new media could be significant.