location based services

Everyone is excited about location based mobile device services and software.

It's not hard to understand why. The created additional (new) business models and revenue streams are extensive and exciting.

What I find interesting is that no-one seems to be thinking that deeply about the fact that we're all talking about this being a sort of "localization" of traditional web services - without pointing out the obvious contradiction.

Much of the power (at a social and cultural level) of traditional web services has been the virtual (a-locational) nature of the experiences. These services (sites and software) have really profoundly altered that nature of social discourse and of group clustering.

Location based services are, of course, profoundly locational (a-virtual).

OK... so clearly simply "porting" web services to location based mobile device services is not going to be a guarantee of success.

Where, to be, it gets really interesting is where the collision between virtual (and distributed) social systems and physical locational social systems occurs. This is likely to create very real change - and thus very real opportunity.

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