Status is Useless Without Location

February 8th, 2009 by ryanstewart

VentureBeat has a decent rundown of the news that Facebook is opening up their status APIs which prompted a lot of “ultimate social gesture. But so far the big players, FriendFeed, Twitter, and Facebook have failed because what’s missing is the geo aspect.

We’ve gotten to the point where people consider photos almost incomplete without some kind of geotagging. Most of the major sites support it and devices with cameras and GPSes, like the iPhone, support it by default. So why aren’t we there with status? Brightkite shows the value this can have. Take a look at a place and you can get a history of everything that’s happened there. But location associated with status is important because status is so real time. Don’t I also want to know what my friend is doing and where they’re doing it? (privacy controls enabled of course) Part of the brilliance of Twitter is that it’s so simple, but geotagging could be very easily done almost invisibly to the users who want to use it.

I think everything on Facebook should be “geoized” – I think they should buy Brightkite – because by adding the location dimension you open up new ways to advertise, new ways to visualize, and more importantly, new ways to connect. See what your friends had to say about where you are now, see what they’re doing right now and whether or not they’re close. Find out if there’s someone in your network at the same restaurant you’re in. Status providers need to embrace location for it to move to the next level.

Posted in General

One Response

  1. ryan

    HELLS BELLS!!! I would hate to see what the Facebook ui designers would do to the Brightkite interface… I personally find facebook hideous by comparison… On the other hand they could just pay Brightkite a ton of money to get them up to speed…

    Jokes aside you make a good point at how behind actual status updates currently are to date…

Leave a Comment

Please note: Comment moderation is enabled and may delay your comment. There is no need to resubmit your comment.

About Ryan Stewart – Rich Internet Application Mountaineer

A blog by a Platform Evangelist at Adobe covering Adobe's RIA platform. Includes posts about Adobe Flex, Adobe AIR, ColdFusion, LiveCycle, Thermo, and everything in between.