Why aren’t location-based networks growing like they were expected to?

Maybe I'm too old to "get it" or maybe it's because I'm not in an urban area, but I really don't see the value-add in location-based social networks. I use Twitter a lot and I use Facebook a good amount. How does adding a <i>location component</i> improve the overall experience for me?<p>It doesn't.<p>I already know when my close friends are in town or out of town. <i>If I want to know what they're doing on a Saturday night, I'll text them</i>. It's 5x faster than launching an app and looking for their marker on a map.<p>Oh, and that chunk of the population that–like me–are married and have children ... I don't need a Gowalla or Foursquare to tell me where they are. They're most likely at work or at home. And they're using Facebook to connect with their friends–because their location doesn't matter.<p>You can argue that they just <i>"need to gain traction"</i> or <i>"need to grow faster"</i>, but maybe the answer to this title is that <i>they simply aren't any more useful than Facebook</i>.<p>Location-based services are great for local commerce, probably great for dating, maybe handy at large events/conferences, but for basic social networking ... meh.

- there is a hardware requirement<p>- there is stalking potential<p>- people don't yet know that they exist<p>It's very early days, expect this to explode somewhere in the next two years. The people that are using this now are the early adopters. It's like in-car navigation, or CD players, a mobile phone or a facebook account.<p>Like that you have a 'novelty' and people argue if it is even useful and like that everybody has one.

This:<p><i>I installed Loopt on my iPhone when it was launched more than a year ago. I stopped using it soon after, since none of my Facebook friends or Gmail contacts were on it. Now it has more than a million users, so last week I installed it again — along with several other apps — but I didn’t have much luck this time either.</i><p>...illustrates why we need to open up the social graph. It's stupid that every new social feature or business has to build its own registration, friending mechanics, etc., or consent to live in a walled garden of one proprietary social network. Brad Fitzpatrick (of LiveJournal fame, now at Google) has long promoted this idea, e.g. see <a href="http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/" rel="nofollow">http://bradfitz.com/social-graph-problem/</a> . Unfortunately it's still very much an open problem. OpenID is one piece of the puzzle, but the rest is still missing.<p>I'm kinda sorta looking into writing Facebook apps right now, and can vouch that I'd be much less reluctant to dive in if the platform were open.

I think that the location based networks are <i>probably</i> growing how you'd expect.<p>The exemplary demographic willing to have their location disclosed (with the biggest upside from doing so) is the 16-25 year old groups of mutual friends that live close together.<p>I'd expect the adoption rate to grow over time, but not as quickly as the more anonymous social networks.

Because these apps all started with the idea: Location based mobile advertising is going to huge. I gotta get me some of that. Hmmm. Hey, social networks are big...what if we do a location based social network?<p>The problem is, it is a stupid damn idea. I mean, think about it. Not only do most of your friends need to be using Loopt (or whatever) they have to be at about the same place at about the same time, but not so close that you an already see eachother. There are just too damn many things that have to line up.<p>So, it is no surprise that they are trying to loosen constraints. Most of them ditched the time constraint earlier this year. The focus moved from meeting up to sharing experiences. They've also been ditching the constraint that you already need to know someone else using the service. Loopt Mix is about meeting new people.

The why may be a matter of whether you own a smart phone or not. People tend to have more desktops/laptops than smart phones. I believe most location based networks rely on smart phones capabilities. For example before I didn't have an iPhone, so I didn't have a loopt account, now that I have an iPhone I use loopt. Other social networks are easily accessible with either phones or computers therefore a greater user market.

There was a post recently about how hotmail took off. My friend in SF could email me here in Australia and hotmail would instantly be useful. Location stuff like this fails for that reason. What value do I have in being the first one in my city to adopt it. See also: Craigslist - anywhere but the few cities it dominates in.

Im very surprised, that people fail to see Yelp mobile as a location based service. Their location based services, finding restaurants and reviews are probably the most I use right now. GraffitiGeo ( purchased by loopt, and y comp), offers almost the same feature set as Yelp as well. Just wondering what is the distinction ?

Its strange .. Social networks like Facebook, orkut have a very high share in mobile internet usage...But still the growth of Location based mobile networking seems to be not that high...I would still expect there will be growth once there is heavy integration of the app with local information,deals etc..

Apps that help you live in each other's pockets? You'll be pushing for communal living next.

Most of these apps seem to be based on the idea that an individual is in a location with no predefined plans/destination and a lack of familiarity with the area. Sounds great for travel but in my everyday life that's just not a realistic problem.

Without widespread adoption these apps aren't very useful. But I don't see that they are able to convince people to sign up very effectively. A lot of people don't have capable devices yet, either.

Surprised Latitude isn't mentioned - this is by far the most popular location network amongst my friends.