Proximity based social networking warms up a little

location based services

Last week mobile presence company Loopt announced a deal with Boost to provide the location of other Boost users via a web browser or phone based application. Their offering seems slick, and with the exception of the obligatory ‘Big Brother’ references, has been well received by the blogosphere.In its current iteration, everything about Loopt's success depends upon the breadth of distribution it can negotiate. Social networking products are grown through the 'network effect' - that magic formula whereby the value of connections between 10,000 people is worth geometrically more than 10x the value of connections between 1000 people. So for Loopt to prosper it needs to recruit many users, and while it depends on carriers to introduce those users, it's not entirely in control of its own growth rate. I hope Loopt has more carrier deals to announce soon, or an unannounced strategy to bust free of carrier-dependence (it should be a ten step plan, like any good addiction-ending commitment). I haven't yet seen evidence to suggest youth consumers will switch mobile carriers just to IM with friends, even if location-awareness is included, so one carrier will definitely not cut it long term.I’ve been messing around with products like Plazes (Bluepulse HQ) for a while and remain interested in the way location based services are developing, particularly when you ramp up the social networking side of it ala Dodgeball. While there’s no doubt that we’re in an early transitional stage, I think proximity based social networking will be great fun as it matures.Having said that, it will be interesting to see if these services flourish at a time when many are concerned about a general erosion of civil liberties surrounding privacy. It’s ironic that on one hand there are people fighting to stop government use of RFID while others are blissfully broadcasting their locations, contacts and conversations through public servers hosted by companies who are arguably less accountable than most governments. Nevertheless, Loopt looks set to make a splash as long as they start laying down distribution deals across a variety of carriers and hopefully open up their technology for anyone to use. While there’s great potential, until friends across any network can access their product it's just a nice value-add for Boost customers.