Tag: Global Positioning System

Location Based Networking – making it work for you

Social networking has become more than a past time , if seen seriously it looks like it has still more challenges to cross, but barring the challenges it has brought in a lot of change , in the way we look today.

But, there is a drawback here, if you need to find a people from the place one is in, one has to search and find the friend. This has given to a new form of social networking – location based networking. Some like Mates is based on Relationship Engine / Relationship Space Navigator. Right now there are many such networks, my favourite being Skout , it is expanding its network by every day. Location based networking sites, allows the user to find out other users from the same location. Of course it also lets you search people from other locations. In Scout for example you have a microblog too , so its a combination of Twitter and a social networking tool.

Location based networking, looks to have tremendous potential effectively. In a recently concluded architecture conference, there was a small brainstorming session ; I am giving some excerpts below:-

Background
Jack and Anne are both in Hawaii, for their business trips. Jack is a venture capitalist, and Anne is in business development for her startup. They don’t know each other but staying in the same hotel. They both have their own plans during the upcoming Saturday. Unfortunately on Saturday morning , it starts to rain and their plans gets spoiled.

How can location based networking help
With a location based networking tool , both Jack and Anne can find each other with similar keywords,”staying at Hilton”. Now the relationship engine navigator searches the network and can find Jack , Anne and other people staying at Hilton. This is also possible through GPS , but I think Relationship Engine would be a better choice, as it used certain features available in GPS too.

Once Jack has found Anne, or other people they can request for a invite and get connected. So the dull weekend may turn out to be a business opportunity for Jack and Anne.

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