Where are you?

The biggest question in many of today's social media ventures, whether individual or brand, seems to be something along the lines of "where are you, right now". The focus on location in social media is a major development for brands, and particularly the mobile device markets, but is this another step towards even more privacy issues?

Questions have already been raised about the dangers of location-based social networking from a privacy perspective, with the argument being rolled out that if someone knows where you are, they also know where you aren't, i.e. at home guarding all of your coveted belongings. My question is, where does it end? At what point does our location become something that is monitored and analysed, with the "social media" aspect of it becoming a veil for a bigger picture?

Obviously we join up to such initiatives of our own accord, but if you look at the population of Facebook vs. the world, and the rapidly developing mobile devices market, it's conceivable that a significant portion of the world could end up sharing their location in the cloud. Or perhaps I'm just being a tad paranoid.

It's ironic that I am of course a user of Foursquare, albeit intermittently, and I'm positive that there will be countless evangelists of location-based services that could easily persuade me that I'm wrong. It just strikes me that all the time we give information away on social networks, and at some point something or someone is going to come along and use it. I just hope that it's for something good.

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