Location based apps - Is it just a game?

There has been a lot of talk this year about location-based services. With the rise in our use of smart phones and mobile internet, a lot of New Zealanders are getting onto the location bandwagon. Foursquare is by far the most popular location-based app here and it's what comes to mind when you talk location. With that app, you can check-in at places you visit, find information about nearby locations and get updates on where your friends are. Both small and large businesses have noticed this trend and are now offering rewards to frequent visitors.

Foursquare works on a cleverly thought-out game dynamic and is mainly a fun activity for a majority of its users. It’s a race to collect points, badges and bag ‘mayorships’. As with any game, there are cheaters here too.

But, is that all there is to location-based-services? Is it just a way to score a couple of free coffees and finding out where your friends are? I always enjoy a good free coffee and have got one just for checking in regularly during the daily coffee run. But I'd also like more services/apps that can connect me to my other networks and give me information that might be relevant to me based on where I am and what time of the day it is.

What can be done to make the location-aware social web add more value?

Robert Scoble in a guest post on Techcrunch writes about what the location-based world could look like in 2012. He sees Foursquare and other similar services at the heart of an ecosystem of apps that serve users in different ways. His ideas, though overwhelming, are compelling.

There are so many different services we use now to share so much information about ourselves on the internet and learn about others. The problem: they don’t talk to each other. Scoble calls them ‘information silos’.

Fortunately, the process of integration has already started. It began when most web services/tools started offering developer APIs. This allows Service A to talk to Service B, which can then connect to Service C. You will need to authorise these connections and customise them to make it work for you. Location-based services have the potential to offer you a personalised web experience. They allow you to access relevant information based on where you are and what time it is, which is a huge shift from the way we find/access information on the web now.

This would also make a check-ins on Foursquare or a similar app more meaningful. One service that can potentially connect to Foursquare is Yelp, if and when it is launched in New Zealand.

There is a lot of discussion on the internet about the type of services and sources of information that can be integrated as an added layer to your location aware app. Once the full potential of this technology is realised, the social web that we all use and love will be a lot richer. Integration with useful services like this will not only add more value to you and local businesses but also make our cities more welcoming to visitors.

Do you use Foursquare, Facebook Places or any other location aware service? Is there any other service/source of information that you would like to connect to it? How can we get more from the web by telling it where we are?