Social networks and iPhone are two extremely popular trends these days. Social networking, over the years, has transformed into an established medium to socialize, have fun and advertise. On the other hand, the iPhone has increased in popularity and is quickly becoming an object that everyone wants to have. The growing use of social networks and the iPhone is creating a new kind of application – location-based social networks. iPhone users especially love to utilize their phones to spend time on social networks. Jennifer Leggio has referenced a report in her post on ZDNet,”Hyperlocal Social Networking: iPhone 3G May Be the Trigger,” describing the growing use of location-based networks by iPhone users.

“Usage of social networking is also popular among iPhone users: 49.7 percent accessed a social networking site in January, nearly twelve times the market average. Twenty percent of iPhone owners accessed Facebook, one of the first Web properties to customize its content for the iPhone, versus 1.5 percent of the total mobile market.”

These statistics indicate that mobile social networking is quickly becoming popular, and that location-based social networks are the future of social networking. The basic theme of a location-based social network is that users on a network can share their location through GPS, mobile email or text. They can locate a nearby restaurant and invite their friends over for a cup of coffee. Various location-based social networks for iPhone are currently available. Let’s check them out.

Limbo – Amplify Your Social Life

This is a free mobile social network community that helps people locate other users and see what they are doing, locate nearby locations and discover things they have in common. Limbo also offers free games and SMS alerts. Users on the network are categorized by four types: members (people you don’t know), contacts (people from your phone’s address book), friends (people important to you), and faves (the most important people to you). Users are free to share their location with all types of users or with a particular user group. Users are further divided into categories like Socializing and Shopping based on their activities. This application is available at the iPhone App Store for iPhone users.

Zintin – Discover, Share, Engage

Zintin is a new service, still in a development stage. Zintin helps people discover users who are physically near them, share pictures and send messages, and engage with new people. This application is similar to Facebook giving each user a “wall” that their friends can post pictures, scribbles and short messages on. It is not possible to predict the popularity of this application since it is still in development. However, Scribble is a quite strong feature that might give it a breakthrough.

Loopt – Your Social Compass

The most established, popular and prestigious mobile social network, Loopt connects people with their friends and alerts them when their friends are physically near them. In addition to location-sharing, it also has the elements of a social network, such as photo-sharing, and comment posting. Loopt also helps users locate places and events recommended by friends and Yelp.com (Partner). This application is map-based and gives directions to people and locations. Loopt also allows its users to filter people by their age, gender, tags, dating status and community.

Whrrl – The People You Know. The Places They Go

Whrrl is another promising mobile social network for iPhone users. It is a fantastic location-based social network. In addition to helping users find nearby friends, it also gives information on business’ location, prices, hours, phone number, website, ratings and reviews.It also helps find hot events happening in the users’ vicinity.

Moximity – It’s All Around you

This is a location-based social network for people in Austin, Texas. It will help them locate their friends and local establishments. It is a new network and currently available in beta. When a user joins Moximity, it gives them the ability to include all of their contacts from Facebook and categorizes them according to who is also using the Moximity social network. It is the only mobile social network that offers advertising services as well.

uLocate’s Where – The Power of Where

“Where” is a location-based social networking application created by uLocate. Being a location-based service, it includes features such as searching for nearby friends, low-priced gas stations and nearby Starbucks franchises, updating the user on location-based poll results in a specific area, identifying the mountain peaks in the area, and learning about nearby events and their venues.

TechCrunch Blog has made a comparison of different location-based social networks for iPhone. Below are some interesting facts about different popular networks.

Source: http://www.techcrunch.com/wp-content/location_based_social_networks.html

Location-based social networks can be handy and fun tools. These applications are quick, convenient and fun to use. The IT industry has been focusing on the development of location-based software applications for mobiles to develop specialized applications. The surprising aspect is that the two social giants - Facebook and MySpace - are not offering these services. However, they are working on adding this feature to their service. Location-based social networks have attracted many users, but if they want to enjoy long-term success, they will need to add features such as a powerful notification system, automatic location update and better stability.

References:

Leggio.J. (2008). Hyperlocal social networking: iPhone 3G may be the trigger. Retrieved Nov. 7th, 2008 from http://blogs.zdnet.com/feeds/?p=147

Hendrikson.M. (2008). The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone. Retrieved Nov. 7^th, 2008 from http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/28/the-state-of-location-based-social-networking-on-the-iphone/

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