1. Friend-finder. It’s been around for ages, is not very successful in basic form, but the principle is clear – see where your friends are, or alert if they are nearby.
2. Local Search. As Friend-finder. With just as turbulent a history. Check where things are around you.
3. Geo-Tagged User-Generated Content. Probably the newest element and getting easier to do. Post info about things, or yourself.

You have to combine these elements in some proportion, and then add some clever Marketing around a broader theme (community, lifestyle, sharing, personal, mobility, …) – and away you go.

There is also a general reliance on advertising, or it’s more subtle name ‘profiling’. This has shown little real evidence of succeeding, because it’s either intrusive, or simply boring. A business should probably operate on more than just the hope that advertising succeeds, eventually.

Having said all this (and somewhat aware that I’m sounding like Waldorf & Statler from the Muppet show), there is a special recipe out there that will succeed big time, because all the ingredients are now ready. Some have been here since the dawn of the mobile phone, some have arrived with the relatively recent social network growth, or the availability of highly capably phones. Taking these components you need to then add your main ingredient which is innovative, or fresh, or a different perspective. This main ingredient should be solid, easily communicable to Joe Consumer, and clearly differentiating you from the hundreds of other ‘Mobile Social networking’ companies. I’ve not see it yet, but it will appear.

But this ” algorithm ” controlling the PUSH advertising is just a new buzz-word for SPAM and most of the users will unsubscribe to services like this when they have received x numbers of messages on there mobile phone simply because they haven’t ask for it!

Secondly it seems like Gypsii should check up what patents there already are in the market (their business model).

Finally I like the point about API’s… everyone should have them. They have to constantly update their server infrastructure to deal wtih the load – we (www.5o9inc.com) when another route which is to move the API to the client – now any mobile app can share data with any web service – less load on the servers.