Top 14 Location Based Startups Competing For Your Attention

Location based services have been with us for some time now and the services provided by these startups have caught the attention of a lot of users. Recently, the introduction of foursquare and especially the users and traffic the service is generating has caught the attention of yahoo, Facebook and a lot of other giants. Popular services include Location based Social networking, Buddy Finder, Friend finder, location based Advertisement services, Traffic management, Car Parking guide, Emergency Services and location based games. Some of these ideas have been implemented pretty well whilst others are yet to catch on.

The following services were identified and they are all competing for your attention.

Loopt is well established in the location based social mapping service. It was first launched with boost mobile and later announced a deal with sprint. It can be used as a friend finder, tags places and create events. You can take a picture from your mobile phone, tag it with the current location and share the same with your friends.

Dodgeball can be used to broadcast your location or send messages to group of friends from you mobile phone. But you have to keep updating you location by sending sms messages.

Kakiloc is a location based social networking service.

Socialight
Social light is mobile location aware application that allows you to write notes about the favorite places you visit. A notification is sent to your friends who go around the same place. You can also write/create sticky notes on the map with your favorite place using the web interface.

ipling
Registration is free, once registered successfully you can create your own circle and look for matches outside the circle. Based on the text you type, you can get hooked with other social members in that area. It can be used as a mobile dating service. It has launched its service optimized for Apple iPhone enabling users to discover and communicate with people who share similar interests.

Foursquare Foursquare aims to encourage people to explore their neighborhoods and then reward peoplefor doing so. They do this by combining your friend-finder and social city guide elements with game mechanics — users earn points, win Mayorships and unlock badges for trying new places and revisiting old favorites.

Foodspotting is a visual local guide that lets you find dishes instead of just restaurants. It’s powered by Foodspotters, who can share their food photos and expertise while building a rich collection of foods and where to find them.

Gowalla is a location-based social networking game created by Alamofire. Users ‘check-in’ at Spots in their local vicinity, either through a dedicated mobile application or through the mobile website. As a reward users will sometimes receive items from check-ins.

Fiddme Fiddme aims to be your local visual guide to culinary wonders around you, exposing you to new places and interesting people in your area

Booyah allows you to buy and own your favorite real-life locations. Collect rent when other people check-in to your shops, Upgrade your shops to increase their value

Sacaya’s Buddy Tracker enables a subscriber to create a list of other subscribers and keep track of their location. It uses a easily scalable, configurable architecture to tailor services based on the subscriber’s location. It offers a very user-friendly GUI and web interface to make additions and deletions to the group or list of subscribers.

Brightkite is a location-based social networking website that is available on any mobile device. Users “check in” at places by using text messaging or one of the mobile applications and they can see who is nearby and who has been there before. The service was created in 2007 by Brady Becker, Martin May and Alan Seideman who previously founded the SMS notification service Loopnote.

Placecast creates game-changing solutions for location-based mobile marketing, advertising and content management.

TheHotlist is a geo-social aggregator that allows users to see where their friends were, are, and will be going. Some blogs describe it as Facebook events on steroids. [1] Using its social map, Hotlist provides a full view of the events, venues, parties and concerts that the user’s Facebook friends and networks visit. Every venue and event is backed with detailed analytics of friends attending, guy-to-girl ratio, age, live tweets, networks and photos of the attending crowd. It currently aggregates data from Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, and Google.