Why Location-Based Services will Create Multiple Winners at the Application Layer

Location, location, location. Whether you?re a real estate agent, a traveler, or building mobile applications, location matters a great deal. As far as phone sensors go, the GPS sensor appears to be one of the most coveted by developers, after the camera. For a consumer, the trade is quite simple: offer your location at a specific point in time, or your patterns, and in exchange for that information, an application will offer you something -- a deal, a coupon, or information about who and/or what is around you. It?s been chronicled before, but bears repeating: In the great race to grab a person?s location, there are many entities who could already map out interesting -- and spooky -- data about our whereabouts. For those of you using plastic to buy things, your credit card companies know where you purchase items, and for those living in the future with Square Card Case, they know, too. The cell phone carriers that charge you monthly fees for questionable signals certainly know your location, as do the handset makers and those who make operating systems on those phones. And, the big social networks -- Facebook and Twitter -- know our whereabouts, as well, capturing data about us everytime we log a status update on the go.

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