The first Web 2.0 innovations helped us make new connections on a global scale. The rise of location-aware tools, linked with the growing ubiquity of real-time, social, and mobile, is swinging the pendulum back to the human and local scale.
Location has permeated our collective wisdom, informing our online and in-person experiences, our business models, and our ability to change the world. Location information is a force for both opportunity and disruption, ready to explode our assumptions about the limits of the internet operating system.
The dramatic increase in the number of products, companies, and people affected by the expansion of location technologies has shaped the 2010 edition of Where 2.0 into three distinct, simultaneous tracks:
- Mapping for Everyone Advanced consumers now expect location to be a requisite feature, helping us to make more informed choices, from a new home purchase to following our favorite food cart. Some ignore location at their peril, but savvy companies are already leveraging location information to engage customers via new mapping data , augmented reality , and relevant data layers . Even Wall Street has started integrating geodata into its business intelligence applications .
- Mobile Innovations It`s not just consumers who have taken to the increased access to information on their hand-held devices. Businesses, institutions, and organizations are all becoming significant players in the mobile arena along all points of the global-local axis, building multiplatform services on the cheap . Smartphones and other devices equipped with mapping apps are forcing stand-alone navigational devices and their business model into obsolescence .
Meanwhile, corporate behemoths are taking the "location is everywhere" mantra to new heights. Apple, with its recent geo acquisitions and overtures to Microsoft, is positioned to compete head-on with Google for location domination.
- Local and Marketing Opportunities and Models Mass consumer adoption of mapping and location-aware technologies has inspired restaurants and Main Street merchants to use tools like foursquare and Yelp to drive new traffic. Are local search and advertising tools really making money, even in this down economy?
