Location-Based Services (LBS) have been around since.. forever (my Master's thesis was on one -- and I remember finding literature on them from the 90s) but they have always been the sort of thing that was failing just short of happening.

So, you ask, what's different this time round -- why 2010? ... And Social Networks is your answer. They've certainly been one of the major developments of the past 4-5 years, and their success is unquestionable, not to mention how much they've already changed our lives. Now, another big change is on the cards: Social Networks are becoming (some have already become) location-enabled, by integrating the (missing up to now) element of geolocation.

Twitter, for example, already allows you to geotag your tweets. Then, you can look for 'Nearby' tweets, so that you can find out what's going on around you (literally), regardless of the people you follow... Unfortunately, only major countries/cities are supported so far, and I'm not in one of them, so I haven't been able to test it out and see for myself how much crap you end up having to go through -- I imagine that will be the main issue with this; you're not picking who to read tweets from anymore.

Facebook has plans to add location, but there's nothing solid yet. Obviously, given the sheer number of subscribers, this is going to be a huge boost for social location-awareness, and it will be really interesting to see then whether it will make or break, because if social networks can't make LBS a reality, I don't know what will! I believe location, once fully integrated, will give a whole new meaning to social networks, and Facebook in particular, and as long as it remains optional and you can still use Facebook without it, people will slowly come to adopt it when they realize the new features and services it can offer them. Granted, not everyone wants their location published with every post, but I think there is a balance to be found in between privacy settings (i.e. who can see my location) and the options to turn geolocation on and off completely.

Foursquare is the main social network site that already provides location awareness. In fact, it's pretty much built around it. The good thing about Foursquare is that it works.. everywhere! It's not just limited to specific places, or large cities. They let you add your own 'places' wherever you are, so that the whole world is open for exploration, and it is up to the users to 'build' the Foursquare virtual world. Obviously, the places with the greatest number of active users are the most interesting (because they have the most places / things to do). The real let-down with Foursquare, however, is that practically no-one I know is on there, and also that there are very few active users around my parts of the world right now, so there's not a whole lot to discover from others. Still, even if you don't know anyone, it's interesting to be finding out activities, new places you might not knwo about (especially in a town or city you're visiting) and general 'things to do'.

However, I came across a very interesting announcement for Foursquare, which I believe is one of the 'killer apps' of location integration in Social Networks.

Foursquare has inked a partnership with the Canadian version of Metro, the free newspaper that gets distributed on subway trains and other locations in various cities, that will give its users the ability to see local news and reviews related to a specific location they are “checking in” at using the service’s iPhone or BlackBerry app. Metro International, a Swedish company that publishes free papers in more than 100 cities around the world, says this is the first time the location-based startup has partnered with a news organization in any country.

In Canada, the paper is in Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver and claims circulation of some 800,000. So if a Foursquare user is near a restaurant in one of those cities for which Metro has a review, that will be displayed as a choice for the user. Although the Metro release doesn’t say whether other forms of news will be available as well, the potential is there for Metro reports on fires, break-ins, celebrity sightings or other news to be provided to users of Foursquare based on their location as well.

I also agree with Mathew Ingram (and Mark Briggs) about the point that they make about closed, proprietary relationships between news services and social networks:

Mark Briggs at Lost Remote makes a good point that in the long term, location-based news would be better accomplished by way of an open API and open data-sharing rather than proprietary relationships between news services and app vendors. But at least in the short term a deal like that of Foursquare/Metro could provide some interesting evidence as to what’s possible when you blend location and news (or marketing) content.

This is just not how social networks work! It is all about User-Generated Content, and yes, granted, there's other information sources in these networks, but my feeling is social network users will prefer news as live reports (tweets, posts, shouts, whatever) from other users, than enterprise-controlled, directed media.

Still, I believe that news, as a service, will be one of the major driving forces at this point, when users will still be processing the phenomenon of location-awareness in social networks.