[Should I care about] Location-based Services (LBS)

Even before the latest peak in downloads of scvngr  Location-based Services had a huge buzz in the internet community; Foursquare's and Gowalla's (both launched last year) growing user base put Facebook under heavy pressure. So heavy that about a month ago they launched their competitive service called Facebook Places.

Location-based services promise to "socially engage" users for your local business like cafés, bars, museums and similar public places. But how do these systems work? Why is there a hype about them? How do they try to keep this promise and what would I - as a business owner - have to do to participate? All boiling down to one major question: Should I care about Location-based Services?

The New Era of Advertising

If we take a look at the global advertising market, we see companies investments heading more and more for online marketing and advertising. It is not about the general growth of the advertising market anymore but it is about the allocation between offline- and online advertising in the future and the way companies promote their products and services. That is going to be an interesting thing to talk about.