Ideas

Monitizing hyperlocal social networking: iPhone 3G + GPS + Social Networks

Jennifer Leggio today wrote a blog on ZDNet that brought up an interesting point about adding GPS functionality to social networking to allow for various updates and influences related to users and their friends.

This got me thinking about the wealth of information that social networks currently hold on a particular user to enable them to fine tune advertising related to them, now if you were able to add the functionality of GPS and the system was able to calculate where the user is, thus when someone is within the vicinity of a shop, (for example borders the book store), using the applications installed on the iphone (such as the facebook app), Borders could potentially advertise to a customer who loves books, has a certain liking for a particular author.  This information can allow the shops to provide an incentive through the social network for the user to come in to the store.

This could potentially have privacy implications, but i’m sure there are ways to make this functionality potentially very friendly both for the consumer and business.

Rather than simply spamming anyone that comes past using bluetooth as has been done in the past, this can be a very targetted means of advertising for the shops for someone who is within easy reach of their store.

Tags: 3g, advertising, facebook, gps, iphone