Location aware services

Smartphones have become very popular in the last few years. They have come so far that even college students have Smartphones that have both internet and GPS on them. This combination opens up a whole new ballgame for social media in small communities.

In my next blog post I will be looking exactly on how these might benefit those small communities. In this blog post I will be looking at several different services that are out there when it comes to location awareness and check-ins.

1) Foursquare

It works with the iPhone, Blackberry's, and Android phones. It lets you sign in to specific location and compete for what it calls becoming the "Mayor" of a place. It also lets you add tips for friends and a ToDo list.

2) Yelp

As of late, yelp also lets you sign into places, before it was a service that would show reviews of restaurants, bars, and other locations based on your location. Yelp works on any phone with internet capabilities. It also has a separate app for the iPhone, Blackberry's, Android phones, and the Palm Pre.










3) Google Latitude

Google Latitude shows you were you and your friends are at any time. It can be used on any phone with internet. It currently doesn't support check-in's.













4) Loopt

Loopt started out in the same way Google Latitude did, but has since added check-in's. It has an app for iPhone, Blackberry's and Android.

Super Bowl

My next tweet is not about social media in small communities, no, this one is going to be a little bit bigger. I do believe that I can go off topic on my own blog.

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday and the game was awesome, but the commercials sucked! However, there was one commercial that I believe would not have worked if it wasn't for social media. Twice during the game they showed Barney Stinson, a character on the CBS sitcom How I met your mother. Barney was pretending to be at the game holding up a sign that spelled out a sentence using the letters CBS. On the bottom there was a number to call, not a 555 number, but a real number.

Now, the first time the commercial came by I didn't have time to check the number. The second time I tried to remember it but I guess 10 digits is too much in those few seconds. I ended up going onto twitter and searching for Barney Stinson and found several people talking about the advertisement and about the number. Sure enough, the number was even listed in some of the tweets.

Had it not been for social media I would have never know that number, mostly because we have a short attention span, and I would have never bothered searching for it a day later when more traditional media outlets would possible discuss the advertisement.

Social media, you did it again!

Ps. Who dat!