Who is Using Geo-Social Networking? [Infographic]
When Facebook showed off its Places feature in 2010, which let users Check In to wherever they are from their smartphone, I was immediately concerned, even though similar functionality had come from apps such as Foursquare a year earlier, with even more public criticism. These services tell everyone you know, and even people you don’t, exactly where you are on the globe. This could be your house, or even more worryingly, simply say that you are away from home. It’s concerning to see how much this is fitting in with our daily lives; Twitter automatically enabled location sharing for me on its mobile app, and it was my priority to turn it off. Apple recently demoed a ‘Find My Friends‘ service, which allows users to track their friends and families smartphones. Apple are good with privacy, yet there is no doubt that there is something overly ‘creepy’ about doing this.
Location based technology spans back many years, most notably to when we began using Satellite Navigation in our cars, and it was instantly inevitable that we would see this technology being used for a variety of different purposes in the near future.
Column Five Media served up this rather concerning, yet simultaneously intriguing infographic which details the type of person who uses these location based services. Surprisingly, Skype and Gmail are at the top of the ‘Top Geo-social Networks’, which share your location more than you think, whilst foursquare, who some could argue made Geosocial networking popular, cowers behind even myspace.
Some networks are very interesting, like Grindr and New People on the block.
[...] Last week’s infographic: Who is Using Geo-Social Networking? [...]
[...] Liu, N (2011), Who is using Geo-social networking Urban Times, accessed 23/03/2012, http://www.theurbn.com/2011/12/who-is-using-geo-social-networking-infographic/ [...]