Making Strides

It's been almost one year to the day since I posted my article on TechConsumer.com 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 will this happen, but 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 makes sense. We now need 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 somebody, 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 at a desktop. It will need to be easy to access from a phone, or at a desktop. Once this happens, prepare to see an explosion of all sorts of wickedly cool apps.