Clearly, the adoption rate of location-aware devices, and their use for location-relevant services, will continue to grow (and outpace the feature-less phones). As with any new technology, we see early adopters, early opponents, lots of business models, and many (…many) opinions about the “right” business model.

That said, at Xtify, we believe that successful adoption of location-based services – those that go beyond simple location look-ups – will be driven by the value (and trust) proposition offered to the user. If the return on a users’ investment is sufficiently high, the barriers minimized, and privacy protected, adoption rate will increase.

We believe that our approach to privacy, utilizing our Trusted Location methodology, differentiates Xtify and further reinforces our business. Our model ensures the trusted relationship is between the user and their trusted entity (business, advertiser, etc). The mobile user always controls access to their location information. We neither collect nor store the user’s individual identity.

Xtify’s differentiation is in our logic, algorithms, services and deep analytics. We believe that offering location providers (carriers, hardware manufacturers, individual businesses, consumers) the right tools to observe, manage, and take action on location will drive our success in the market. In short, location will require intelligence and we stand ready to provide it.

I’m looking forward to meeting as many of you as possible next week at Claudio’s conference in Miami. We can continue this debate then!

Exactly how are you going to enforce that? Note the use of the word “should”. It’s wide open to interpretation.

Privacy is the “health care” issue of mobile. There is no silver bullet here. However I believe the answer starts with the consumer. If you remember that “Trust drives Transactions”, then the best approach is to build a trusted relationship with the customer first and then leverage the location data to provide a better service.

In the comments I also see that Latitude and Fire Eagle are mentioned. Why do Yahoo and Google have to have a monopoly on my location data? Why can’t I send it anywhere I want – this is especially important when it comes to the Enterprise.

Just like everything, it depends. So in this case, it depends on what you mean by “in the cloud”. If the infrastructure is co-located in a secure data center and you are connecting to it from an office to the data center over a T1, technically, the DC is accessed through the Cloud, but over a dedicated tunnel.

This is completely fine to do from a SOX auditor’s perspective. It is happening all the time. Large enterprises are getting their infrastructure out of their “data rooms” in their buildings and keeping it safe in a Data Center where access links are created to that data from the offices. Even banks do this!

Now a better model is a dedicated MPLS line to that DC because now the line is completely secured and not going through the Cloud to get to the information. But from a technical perspective, they are both very secure and both compliant with SOX.

My company just signed a financial customer and we just finished their SOX audit and passed with flying colors, and they are using T1′s with dedicated tunnels through the Cloud to access their systems stored in our data center. Auditors loved it!

I’ve checked the CTIA recommendations more than a year ago. The problem is that technology, services and business models evolve faster than the recommendations. They are a very good starting point and I recommend reading them when you approach this market.

In any case and to Peter’s point “…It doesn’t leave me in control of my data…” I have my personal interpretation. If you look at the CTIA recommendations you read this interesting paragraph: “…LBS Providers must allow LBS users to revoke their prior consent to disclose location information to all or specified third parties. Where technically feasible, LBS Providers may provide for selective termination or restriction of individual LBS applications upon LBS user or wireless carrier account holder request…”

Control of my data to restrict the access to all or specified third parties or having control of keeping/deleting the record of my whole history?

Note that in a different paragraph they recommend that: “…LBS Providers should retain user location information only as long as business needs require, and then must destroy or render unreadable such information on disposal. If it is necessary to retain location information for long-term use, where feasible, LBS Providers should convert location information to aggregate data…”

You can ask to restrict the access, but bottom line once I share my location “my” is not mine anymore (is for others to mine ) . Consumers must be aware that “free” has a price, and that companies provide location services for one ultimate reason “to make a profit” (at least most of them). Same as other types of personal information (history, pictures, videos, connections) people will need to evolve to understand the difference between privacy and personal security. But that’s a completely different discussion – see my previous notes on privacy here:” Location Based Social Networks – Is Privacy Overrated? Rules for a New World”

Glad to read this conversation.

As far as the model, it is like all new markets: the “chicken and egg” problem. Developers looking for location-tagged information on potential customers would love a clearing-house of this data, if and only if there is substantial numbers for each query into their system. As a complete guess I would assume that Xtify does not have huge numbers of end-users right now. It is hard to imagine developers getting too excited by a limited resource. Conversely, if an end-user could get access to tons of neat, personalized services through this utility, there would be great motivation for them to download and try the resident utility providing location to those applications. But without the exclusively-partnered applications, it is hard for the end-user to justify taking up their meager phone resources for a utility that may “one day prove useful”.

Finally and most importantly: competition. There at least one similar effort and others that are similar enough to merit mention. For example, FireEagle ( http://fireeagle.yahoo.net) has established itself as a utility to share your location with multiple sites and vendors. Google Latitude allows you to share your location through an API and Loopt has interfaces to popular applications such as Twitter and Facebook. Others have been mentioned previously in previous comments. Having competition is actually a good thing, it means they probably have hit upon something that is of value. However, not only are they fighting against time and inertia, but also against groups that are providing similar services today (and in some cases for free). The key will be how they differentiate themselves from the others.

Jon

Why send the data to their servers. It should be possible to send it to ANY server that needs it. What if they go out of business? What if the Government wants access to my data from their servers?

This is what’s wrong with this approach. It doesn’t leave me in control of my data. It’s not a unique approach at all. All the iPhone apps are now sending my data back to their servers. What’s happening is the web is being segmented an app at a time.

The alternative approach is to simply extend the HTTP protocol and allow the consumer to send his/her data via the browser to any web service that delivers meaningful value.

Peter

The solution sounds interesting, but with a couple of drawbacks that are inherent in a model that requires putting a client application in place. That being said, the solution from Xtify does appear to address the famous pay-per-dip issue of sourcing the data from the wireless carrier. Inasmuch as the carrier has a cost to provide that information (by generating traffic on the network to ping the device and then traffic to return the results of the ping), there is an overhead that needs to be covered. The mobile service provider is probably also charging a fee that is kept high enough to discourage too much use as well.

The company I work for, TelcoBridges, develops network monitoring hardware that captures SS7 signaling traffic, such as that generated by voice calls or SMS messaging, over mobile networks (and traditional wireline as well). In doing so, it can collect information about cell towers, timing and power, that can be used to triangulate the position of the mobile subscriber without generating additional network load to contact the device.

This approach has a couple of other advantages:
- no client-side application to install
- works on all phones, smart or not
- no need for a data plan
- no need for explicit user intervention; data is kept current by using the phone for SMS or voice; for a large part of the demographic likely to use LBS, this is likely to provide sufficient data freshness.

In the advertising example that was mentioned in the article, using TelcoBridge’s hardware, the actual SMS used to request a search also provides the geographical context required to return a meaningful result. As a result, you could search on a term as simple as ‘pizza’ and not have to add the zip code, city, or state. The SMS message would be captured and analyzed by TelcoBrides’ hardware at the BSC level with the positional data sent to the search engine (or yellow pages directory shortcode) alongside the actual search term. If you were at the corner of Lexington and 53rd in Manhattan, you would be provided with a list of pizza joints in the general area triangulated by the system. Since there are likely to be a fair number of cells in the neighbourhood, you would get very precise results.

Since this approach does not generate additional load for the provider over the mobile network (as opposed to the backhaul or data network), then the pricing model can go from one of encouraging application developers not to use the solution to one where the service provider can actually monetize the data in a meaningful way because it is being used. Instead, the economics are changed so that data capture and sharing (for a fee) are encouraged.

Please note that this approach can be used at the individual subscriber level as well as when aggregating multiple subscribers for the purpose of real-time traffic.

The drawback of the TelcoBridges’ approach — just like that of any network-based one as opposed to handset-based — is that the resulting services are service provider-specific. It either becomes a value-added specific to the service provider, or it becomes necessary to have the solution in place at all service providers so that all mobile subscribers, irrespective of their carrier, can participate…