What I mean by first-class metadata is information that is captured along with any kind of recorded information. Examples of such information includes “title”, “description”, and “timestamp”. Geotag info viewed in this light is best captured as metadata, allowing for interpretation/usage of that metadata based on the context of the user reading it. For example, this is what Twitter is doing with their Geotagging API.

Location as an attribute is fundamental to so-called location-based “services”, however the form of this “service” in terms of technology and business model and their respective evolution is what many folks are trying to get a handle on today.

IMHO, the long term vision for LBS is the “Star Trek” computer; always in the cloud and knowledgeable about your context. The hardware and software we have available today are giving us baby steps towards that. More closer to home are the ideas in Ubicomp done in the late 80’s by Mark Weiser, et.al. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing) where we’re constantly surrounded by small, cheap, networked processors that are aware of our presence – that world will come to us real soon now, definitely before 2030.

It would be very narrow to only think of LBS as an ad-rev model or one where its sole purpose is to keep track of your social graph. Location is a feature, yes, but it’s a big one where as mentioned above, “we’ll all have to think about some more.”

Absolutely, because right now the benefit seems to be much greater for the vendor/advertiser than the consumer. I need to try Gowalla btw, it is getting a lot of buzz. Thanks for sharing all your ideas!

Hey Charles, awesome to having you weighing in on this since you’re the creator of the LBS service Acqui. I’m not as familiar with this idead of “first-class metadata”, what else would you say falls into this category of metadata?

We all will.

The key will be to create geo-located ad hot spots. When you are in that spot, the LBS app would notify you of a special. For example: You are at the stop light at 122nd and 85th. Coffee Creations could notify you with “$1 Off Latte for the next hour [Save][Ignore][Block this Vendor]”. In that case, your location would make you more likely to act on the ad. And your location makes you more valuable to the vendor.
The company that executes this style of service well is who to watch in this space. The trick will be to attract users – and that’s where the game mechanics of 4SQ and Gowalla, etc. need to be compelling.

My gut feeling is even with GPS in every phone, this is something that will need to be “fixed” on the carrier/operator side rather than something which requires users to turn on a service and load an app.

It strikes me that the separate location based social networking apps and services are going to really struggle compared to people who provide integration into existing services that people use.

There are probably some niche location based apps around search and similar but you could be right that it’s not going to be a license to print money.

I’m not arguing that LBS won’t exist, just that the market isn’t enormous enough to justify/support the 100s of companies/products that have been created in the space. It is a feature, best launched and experimented with inside of a product like Facebook that already has the correct relationship and trust model.

You make a good point, a younger generation might not be as private about location – but you’ll see that I am not stating privacy as the issue, I already publicly share my location. It’s more an issue of whether I want to see advertising content and, more importantly, whether I will actually be more likely to act on those ads.

I’ll have to think on this more…