eWeek captures my thoughts on Google’s Mobile Social Network, Latitude

Above: Video by Google about it’s latest social network for mobile devices and Google IG, Latitude

I was going to write a post about Google’s new mobile social network (see video to learn about Latitude), but after an excellent interview with eWeek’s Nathan Eddy, he really captured my thoughts well. Rather than repeat it, please read his article: “Analyst: Google Latitude Not a Threat to Facebook, MySpace“.

Don’t just take my word for it, have you tried Latitude? What do you think the impacts are to marketing, advertising, developers in the next few years?

Update: I’m not alone Nicholas sees the opportunities for advertisers.

8 Replies to “eWeek captures my thoughts on Google’s Mobile Social Network, Latitude”

  1. Google Latitude offers a huge range of touch points and interactions for brands with their customers. I see the most potential for this kind of service for CRM activities. The combination of the location, the social graph and the CRM data of the brands will enable a dialog, which will address exactly the needs of the customers.
    It™s interesting to see, that the MNOs are still sleeping – they are not able to come up with such an innovative approach. This could have been the solution for their obsolete business model.

  2. I used to be the community manager at a location based mobile app named Limbo.com. They were a competitor of Loopt/Whrrl/Where. One of our major issues was that we put everyone who signed up into another social network. Loopt got around this by integrating Facebook Connect. It will be even easier for Google if all you need to do is have a Gmail account.

    Another issue was delivering location based data and ads. We could see where they were, but not what they were doing. We forced our users to tell us what activity they wanted to do, like Drinking –> Coffee. We would then serve up coffee houses around them and sell ad space (or try to sell ad space) to Starbucks/Peets…

    Google has a real leg up here. Once they decide to show activities and not just friends, they can serve up ratings, street views, directions, photos and videos. Location based ads are certainly part of the plan.

  4. Mobile social networks are becoming plentiful and the functionality is improving. Query how many ways do you really want to know where your friends are and will ‘meeting for lunch’ be a sufficient use-case to expand adoption? Has anyone heard of developments in mobile utility network platforms?

  6. I think Google Latitude technology would be fascinating from an advertising perspective. Kind of like “virtual billboards” on your map.

    It could also increase the visibility of Google business listings and ratings if they are visible from your location as well.

    However, I just checked, and Latitude isn’t available for iPhone just yet.

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