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2010: year of the stalker?

GPS services allow friends to track you

By: Misty Harris

Posted: 12/19/2009 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

RUSSELL A. DANIELS / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES The Foursquare application allows users to share their whereabouts with friends.

While Twitter and Facebook have seen conversations driven by what we're doing, 2010 will shift the focus to where we're doing it.

As likely to be considered stalking tools as social utilities, applications such as Google Latitude, Friend Mapper, HeyWAY and Foursquare use a smartphone's global positioning to broadcast your precise location to other users.

The opt-in services essentially turn a phone into a real-life Marauder's map -- the magical document that, in the Harry Potter series, reveals the whereabouts of other people.

Widely predicted to be among next year's top trends, location-based services will have significant implications for individuals and businesses alike -- not to mention parents who want to know if their teen is really at the library.

"The millennial generation is much more accepting of it than older generations, who see it as very Big Brother-esque," says Ann Mack, director of trendspotting for advertising giant JWT.

"It's all about finding what you need, or who you need, when you need to."

Although every application works differently, most share a similar concept: Once you've opted into a service, anyone in your network -- that is, people to whom you've granted following privileges -- can discover via global positioning precisely where you are.

In turn, you can check to see which members of your network are nearby, as well as learn the locations of nearby businesses and attractions -- a growing number of which are providing opportunities to interact.

Disney, for example, launched an app last month that uses a phone's GPS to direct theme-park guests to rides, update on line times and suggest nearby restaurants.

Opting out is usually achieved with the push of a button, helping users control when and what they share.

"None of us wants 100 per cent of our lives to be public, but I think we're accepting a much larger degree of openness," says Adam Killam, an Internet marketing consultant from Vancouver. "Once you've developed a habit of sharing information, privacy isn't that big an issue, as long as you're aware of what you're putting out there."

Laying the groundwork for acceptance was geotagging, which for some time now has allowed the inclusion of geographical details (think longitude and latitude) on photos, videos and, more recently, Twitter posts. Other applications utilizing this technology include Flickr, Gowalla, Yelp and Loopt, among many others.

"Part of the appeal, from a business standpoint, is that it lets people know you're active in the local area," says Killam.

"And from a social standpoint, it's a fun way to connect with friends and find out what people in your network are up to."

Enjoying the technology's fostering of community, but not its capacity to enable "stalking to the next level," Edmonton's Karl Kovacs says he's mindful of when he reveals his location to his network -- which on Twitter alone consists of 6,400 people, only a tiny fraction of whom are personally known to him.

"Whatever you post could potentially show up on the front page of the New York Times," says Kovacs, an IT consultant. "You have to ask yourself, 'Am I OK with that?' "

ABI Research predicts that by 2014 -- when nine out of 10 smartphones are expected to include GPS -- the total global revenue from location-based services will reach $14 billion US, up from $2.6 billion this year. Advertising Age recently called it the future of mobile marketing, while Mashable, an influential social media blog, predicts the technology will be one of the "breakout hits" of 2010.

"We care where our friends are," says Ben Parr, co-editor of Mashable. "It's as simple as that."

-- Canwest News Service

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 19, 2009 B8

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