Better late than never. It seems that companies these days manage better and better to commercialize LBS by packaging it into services that are of good use. One particular area, or functionality rather, is location awareness. It happens in the background and is an integrated piece of the service. Foursquare use it in their game based friend finder type service. Search is of course another good area.  The end-game with online dating is to meet someone in the physical world, so there LBS makes sense as well.

Another large area that use location data is of course augmented reality (AR) services. Layar is probably one of the more prominent ones. It is only with good use of positioning that we unlock one of the most hyped values of the mobile. So sorry for  uttering these words that would generate “boo!!” cheers and tomatoes if mentioned from the stage at any mobile conference. “The mobile is always with you”. Well, if the service knows where you and your mobile are, the service can do more for you. Pretty basic stuff. As often with new technology entertainment is the first area of application. Therefore we see gaming and online dating as the first obvious areas of application. Search is the first utility type application and it makes sense. (Try the wikipedia layer in Layar for instance and you will get a good WOW feeling!)

Many express fear of breached personal integrity with LBS services. That is often a misconception, especially with all the services I have mentioned so far. They are all location aware only and are not revealing to anyone else what your location is. As mentioned above, the service you use need to know where you are to deliver real value to you. This is all seamlessly happening in the background.

Take the dating scenario. For the user the end goal is to meet a new person in real life. With location in the matching algorithm you get more value. Now you know the persons on top of the list fits your criteria best and is nearest to you. If you want to send an invite to meet up for a coffee this afternoon it is likely you are near enough to make that possible. Disclaimer: I am the founder of Souldate, a full-blown dating service in your mobile with positioning.

Games and communities with location involved has a large potential. From the location information you can extend that thought to RFID and touch based things to prove you have been at a place or met a person. This opens up for scavenger hunts, detective/mystery games to mention a few. Stand alone titles/services in this area or even more interesting maybe is to extend this into advertising in sponsored games.

There are some impediments of course. The cost of LBS data from providers of the data, be it operators or aggregators. A cost per location request will kill most ideas. Companies building business model on monetising location data sold wholesale are doomed. Way forward via APIs to data from handsets with apps for positioning or GPS. Examples are of course Android, iPhone and Vodafone 360 API. This is also one great example why carriers do not have to become dumb pipes. They can be smart pipes by offering these APIs and others.

What are your thoughts on LBS? Is it still BS or will it really happen in 2010?