New York Times
Claire Cain Miller and Jenna Wortham examine the effort to move location sharing into mainstream culture and conclude that user adoption may be more dependent on age than technology.
Despite $115 million in venture capital investments in the past year, only 4 percent of U.S. residents have tried location-based services, and only 1 percent use them regularly. Miller and Wortham report that 80 percent of those users are male, mostly between 19 and 35 years old:
“That rings true for Richard Sherer, 65, a freelance writer in Redondo Beach, Calif. ‘I can’t think of anybody who cares where I am every minute of the day except my wife, and she already knows,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s a generational thing. As we old fogies die off, maybe this will no longer be an issue.’ ”
The low adoption rate for location sharing via Foursquare and Facebook Places is separate from the potential to use location data to provide targeted information to consumers. Online publishers who hope to engage a mobile audience must find ways to utilize location to customize editorial and advertising content.
Check-ins will always be a niche service to some extent, but local news and advertising is the larger market — one that Facebook and others are also pursuing.