Google Latitude: It’s 10pm, Do You Know Where Your Audience Is?

February 4th, 2009
Author: John Ratcliffe-Lee

Google shook-up the location-based service marketplace today with the introduction of Latitude, a feature built to augment the already hulking power of Google Maps.  Rex Sorgatz eerily forecasted this announcement when he saw lots of people jumping ship from the soon-to-be shuttered Dodgeball over to BrightKite.

Similar to BrightKite, Latitude lets you broadcast your location to almost anyone through coordinates generated by your mobile device.  ”Almost anyone,” unfortunately, means only your contacts on Google/Gmail.  For those of you who love Google and letting the greater web know where you are at all times, wait your turn – for now.

What does this mean for PR?  The implications for location-based marketing are huge.  From opt-in sharing ideas to just getting a better idea of where your audience frequents, a whole new dimension for connecting people is being pushed by one of the biggest names on the web.  A very big step.

What do you think?  This set our minds off to the races with pretty awesome ideas but we want to hear from OTD readers about how you think Latitude fits inside the marketing communications world.  Let us know!

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 6:55 pm and is filed under Public Relations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • I agree that this is another case of everyone getting excited about Google doing something that others have already done. However, as a self-professed Google fan I think the main reason this happens is Google's products tend to just be better than the others. I haven't used Latitude yet (and may never), but when Gmail launched (with all it's invite-only exclusivity) it was so far superior to the offerings of Hotmail and Yahoo that it was ridiculous. Allowing Google to run targeted ads was a small price for me to pay to have a webmail interface that was actually better than the IMAP clients I had been using on my desktop.

    As far as Latitude itself, I don't really get all of the privacy backlash. If you don't want Google to know where you are/have been then don't install the app. If you can't see the usefulness (I'm still trying to figure that part out), then don't install it. This isn't some new tracking tool that is installed everywhere and can be turned on whenever big brother wants to know where you are.
  • It would be kind of cool for figuring out where your friends are at. How cool would it be to be taking a taxi in NYC, check your phone and see your friends are in a bar just up the street, stop in and join them! Sweet

    I think you can cloak your location if you do not want others to see your location, i.e.. if you are studying for an exam or on a date with someone else! Bad!
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