In last week’s edition of This Week in Technology, we briefly discussed location-based technologies such as Foursquare and Gowalla as a "foregone conclusion," meaning that everyone had already accepted it and that there really was not a reason to discuss it further.

However, last week I also met with the director of one of the area’s leading public relations firms, who stated that he "doesn’t get why anyone would want to use these." This leads me to believe that while it may be old news to some people; it is entirely alien and unfamiliar to others.

So for this week’s edition, we’ll take a look at location based technologies, integration, and the potential value it has for businesses that choose to embrace them.

What are Location-Based Social Networks?

Most smartphones are GPS enabled, meaning that you can pinpoint your location fairly precisely. Even phones that don’t use GPS can find their location within a location by using cell towers to triangulate their position. The miniaturization of GPS and integration into standard mobile devices provides users with the ability use their location to quickly gather pertinent and relevant information about the area. This information can be valuable to you as a consumer in many ways, and it opens up the door for interesting social media and information opportunities.

This information is often integrated into custom applications (apps) which enhance the features of the phone to provide additional value. For example, some let you track the location of your pets (should your dog ever get lost), whereas others let you monitor real-time traffic on the road ahead so that you can plan alternate routes to your destination. This has been implemented hundreds of different ways and includes everything from weather forecasts, finding the nearest Chinese food, or helping you find where you parked your car.

Location-based social networks allow people to keep in touch with each other based on their location. Many of the services allow users to "check-in" to locations as they visit them, and then can broadcast this information to friends or networks, depending on the user’s preferences. These networks also function to help people find out "what’s hot" in the area, or to get involved with local events or businesses.

Why do people use it? Aren’t there privacy concerns?

Privacy is a concern, but not as much as you might think. Location-based services have a default privacy setting that require people to opt in to public sharing options, meaning that you everything is private until you change it, and you can still benefit from all of these services without sharing your location with the world.

These services are becoming increasingly popular as illustrated by one service, Foursquare. Foursquare is only about a year old, but already has more than 600,000 users and is expanding rapidly. For example, last week it added almost 10,000 new people to the service every day, and registered more than 347,000 "check-ins" in one day alone.

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