Buzzword Chasers

Geo-Location: Twitter and Facebook… Promising but Murky Future- Part 1

Imagine reading someone’s tweet about the World Cup and being able to tell if they are watching the game on TV or are actually at the stadium. This is now a reality as Twitter announced on its blog Monday the introduction of a location identification feature to help provide context to tweets. Twitter Places essentially helps people know where a tweet is coming from and allows people to:

· Tag tweets with specific places

· Create new Twitter Places

· Click a Twitter Place within a tweet to see recent tweets from a particular location.

Unsurprisingly, its social media competitor Facebook was also making noise on the geo-location front Monday. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed to the press that Facebook will be launching location-based features in the near future.

It’s clear that geo-location is becoming a very hot feature in social media, but the questions remain: what are its implications and will this trend catch on?

Geo-Location: Where the Money Is

One of the most promising applications of geo-location is for well, what else? Helping companies make money. Marketers will take keen interest in knowing where people are relative to their businesses or products. The ability to place highly targeted, contextual ads based on the real time location of consumers could be a real game changer. Companies could not only draw consumers towards their products, but also reach shoppers in a competitor’s store to try and draw them away. Geo-location integrated into social media will allow marketers to move people physically like never before.

“The ability to place highly targeted, contextual ads based on the real time location of consumers could be a real game changer.”

Companies leveraging geo-location will also be able to take advantage of the inherently viral nature of social media. Geo-location advertising is a perfect way to promote special deals or new products as companies could offer discounts, freebies, exclusive sneak peeks etc to people who are near their store or product. Then, if people wanted to share this useful information, they could go on Facebook or Twitter (or both!) and inform all their friends or followers of the promotion with their location automatically showing up on a Google Map.

In addition, geo-location has great promise for the marketing of unused or expiring inventory. Geo-location can help move people to buy an expiring product at a discount or attend an event they would not have otherwise attended. Opportunities include:

· Sporting Events. Geo-locally targeting people in sports bars or gyms and giving them unused tickets. This would help increase brand exposure for the team as well as bring in revenue from sources like concessions, souvenirs, etc.

· Hotels. Giving away vacant rooms so as to increase brand exposure and capitalize on potential accommodations like room service, mini-bar etc

· Destinations. Museums, zoos, and theme parks could give away free passes to people in the area and profit from any other sources of revenue like concessions, souvenirs etc.

What’s Next?

Companies are tapping and integrating into the highly influential social media platforms more and more. The big players like Facebook and Twitter are making serious forays into the geo-location game.

These moves clearly pave the way for an interesting future where businesses and marketers have a unique, highly targeted and potentially very effective way to sell their products utilizing highly contextualized ads and social networks.

As Twitter’s and Facebook’s recent announcements illustrate, companies and social media sites are anticipating big things from geo-location, but the big question is whether or not the public at large will actually utilize these geo-location features. Check back soon for Part II of this series where we will discuss likely factors that influence the public’s decision to use geo-targeted services.