Last week Google launched (yet another) new service. This one was called ‘Google Latitude’ and allows you to be located on a map through your mobile phone. The thinking behind this new software is that you can find ‘where your friends are on a map’ which means Google is presenting this as a social networking software rather than a gps locating service. This makes sense since social networking is all the rage, however I’m not sure that this service is most useful as social networking tool. The new service quickly caused controversy and privacy groups where claiming that this was one further step towards a big brother society where our every step can be tracked. Oblivious to such concerns I decide to test the software.
The installation worked well enough and I was impressed with the fact they had already thought of the status bar in below the location (after all this is clearly the year of the twitter.com). The tracking of my movements however wasn’t all that accurate and my virtual self was clearly not keeping up with my actual self. So it isn’t quite the answer for those who want to know for certain where their kids or loved ones are, however there is clearly some great scope for some smart use of this in marketing and other entertaining fields. I can also see it as a great tool to combine with facebook or twitter if you are on the move and want to share your travels with your friends.