The Next Big Thing Is On Its Way But Still Not Here
by Marion JensenIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
It’s been almost one year to the day since I posted my article on TechConsumer about why “Web 2.0″ wasn’t enough, and how “geocontent” might just well be the next big thing.
I’ve yet to change my opinion.
During the past year I have seen many strides taken by many companies in the effort to link content to location. Google is interested; Yahoo is interested. We all know the latest iPhone will have GPS. It is no longer a question of if it will happen, but rather, the question is when will it happen. And who will be the big winner?
I’ve noticed that there are several companies trying to get their foot in the geocontent arena by hopping on the Web 2.0 bandwagon. Take Loopt, for example, or ByNotes. Loopt says they are connecting people and places. ByNotes looks to be a Twitter/blog/GPS mashup. But these companies are working on “Geo 2.0″ before “Geo 1.0″ has been built.
Look at how the Internet came to be. First there was nothing. Then there was a little bit of content. Then there was a boat load of content. Then there was so much content we couldn’t wade through it all. At that point, Web 2.0 suddenly made sense. We now have social networks, other humans, to help us sift through the billions of blogs to find the really good stuff (think reddit, Digg, etc.).
But the geocontent arena hasn’t hit this critical mass. We don’t have massive amounts of really good content yet. We don’t have a way for people to create interesting content around locations. Or even tie exisiting content to locations. Until this happens, geocontent 2.0 will likely take a back seat as a sparkly bobble. Something fun to look at, but not as important.
It is my prediction that someone, somewhere will come up with a very slick and easy way to tie content to a location. It will need to be easy to do with a phone or a desktop. It will need to be easy to access from a phone or a desktop. Once this happens, prepare to see an explosion of all sorts of wickedly cool apps.
Note: This article cross-posted at Chickens Don’t Have Armpits.
2 Comments 
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July 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
It’ll be interesting to see if geocontent will follow in the same footsteps as web 2.0 in terms of user contribution. I think of Digg/reddit/Wikipedia — or practically anything with user-submitted content — as examples and still am confused as to how exactly millions of people doing something for free came about.
Will the same concept hold if geocontent takes off? Probably. But I still wonder why.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pm
I’ve recently launched a geocontent website, roadtrippr.com. The whole site is based on users sharing locations near them, finding things that people passing through would normally miss. I also have an iPhone optimized version of the website at iphone.roadtrippr.com