Are we in TMI Overload?
July 6th, 2010 by Alison Raymond
What are your friends, family and colleagues up to? In high school and college my friends and I could keep track of each other by checking our IM statuses. Then MySpace and facebook became the more popular way to see what people were up to. Now, more and more location-based services are popping up, allowing people to let the world know where they are and what they’re doing, allowing them to find deals close to them geographically, etc.
This offers a big opportunity for advertisers to target their consumers through an additional channel: their phones. According to market researcher, BIA/Kelsey, mobile advertising in the U.S. is expected to reach $3.1 billion in 2013 – going from $320 million in 2009.
A recent USA Today article cites information from market researcher Nielsen that says by the end of 2011 smartphones are expected to be the majority of mobile devices available. Additionally, as of right now about 5% of the over 225,000 iPhone applications have location services. I personally have the Motorola Droid, and while the Droid doesn’t have as many apps as the iPhone, a lot of the applications are also location-based.
Now, while all these location-based services are really cool, are we in TMI overload? I know this discussion has been going on for a long time, but location-based services, like Foursquare, Gwalla, and Loopt are not going away any time in the near future. In fact, more and more like-services are popping up everywhere and growing immensely popular.
I’m not so sure I want to know where all my friends and family are at all times of the day. Then again, I don’t really want to know most of the information that finds itself in my feeds on facebook. On the other hand, I’m sure there are people who don’t care where I am either – whether my status says I’m at my parents or at the dog park. However, what anyone puts as their status is a bit different as to having your phone be your personal tracker of where you are and what you are doing.
Regardless of whether or not these apps are putting us in TMI overload – they definitely are cool and it’ll be interesting to see what’s next!
Do you use location-based applications on your phone? Which ones do you use the most?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 6th, 2010 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Mobile, Social Media, Social Networks, Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
