Social Geotagging

The field of Location Based Services is still relatively new. Effectively there are a small number of groups seeking to capture market share through the widespread acceptance of their model. A mass market understanding of the potential of these services has not as yet been achieved.

The first company to educate the market will effectively define the first stages of its growth. Google Earth and Google Maps have influenced the current trends in LBS but the next stage is still up for grabs.

Many of the initial services may be complimentary in their ability to support mash ups of one kind or another.

Some of the challenges in this marketplace are:

• Creating a model that encourages user generated content
• Creating a critical mass of user generated content
• Average mobile application UI’s do not make it easy to create content on mobiles
• There is a small existing pool of GPS enabled devices
• A dependence on larger suppliers geo-spatial data
• High carrier data costs