No blogging this morning as I was busy presenting a view of location services at the BBC and then speaking on a panel discussion.

Thoroughly enjoyable, and the best panel discussion yet according to @uphamb.

Follow #locbiz f you want a rundown of events so far.

Now back to sitting, watching, listening and blogging.

Joel Grossman from Wavemarket is talking about location aggregation, with particular reference to mobile phones.

Family Locator, a successful 2005 downloadable mobile application although plenty of difficulties and challenges.

Version 2 launched in 2006 and migrated the interface to the web which resulted in exponential growth over the initial 3 months.

Apparently there are 600 billion SMS per year in the US that ask “where are you?”.

Add to this the fact that 100% of phones use SMS but only 15% are smartphones with access to location API and there appears a great opportunity.

Not for the first time at this conference we’re talking about how to obtain metrics on the success of mobile advertising to convert an advert view into a visit to the store.

I’m not the first to mention this, but why not focus on selling the product directly via the mobile rather than trying to force consumers from a mobile advert to a real-world store – surely that would be easier?  And measurable.

Motti Kushner from Telmap is now going to talk about a winning strategy for successful location based services.

1. Ensure location capability on every device
2. Make it local, relevant and valuable – understand the consumer/audience needs
3. Then monetize – and this needs more thought than simply adopting a standard advertising approach

Good emphasis on the second point on how users behaviour differs depending on their social/local profile and location.

Importantly, the services/tools people use for local tasks (e.g. finding a restaurant) are different in countries across the world.

On the monetization front, a strong view that the answer lies with the mobile operator.

Pillars for success

• An open LBS platform
• Local content and services relevant to the location
• Active widgets library integrating products and tools
• A rich location companion on the client side with location based advertising

Tony Jebara from Sense Networks talks about the old view of LBS data – obtaining the single point reference to the nearest Starbucks for a potential customer.

The new view consists of a building a location data history to enable better understanding of the individual user, and therefore offer more personalisation.

Sense Networks have a couple of applications that are built on this analysis of historic data as well as using the present, real time location information.

CitySense – Real-time density of users on every street corner in San Francisco captured every ten minutes.

CabSense – Tracking 13,000 New York City taxis to help people find the best location to hail a taxi.  Also captures data by day and time to allow views of best places to get cabs at specific times of the day and week.

CitySense will not just show you where lots of people are, it will show you where lots of people like you are.

This is achieved by a user segmentation model derived by analysing mobile phone data, GPS trails, etc and tracking the places each individual user lives, eats, drinks, and spends their time.

Mathematical models then work out the probability of user x being of a certain age, wealth, life status, and so on.

Lots of fantastic network models and diagrams – who is like who, who drinks with who, which people are similar to others, and so on.

The data model is updated approx once a week and the analytics API is due to be released this summer which will allow everyone to tap into this user data.

Next it’s Claire Boonstra, from Layar, with some great examples of augmented reality in action.

In making a good case for AR as a powerful new tool it’s clear that it is interesting, entertaining, clever and enjoyable to look at.  But what about the consumer need or, more to the point, the business model?

Layar is the world’s largest AR community with over 1.6m users, 3000+ developers, 500+ layers published, and 2000+ layers currently in testing.

Layar.com/create if you want to get involved.

Layar positioning is derived from GPS and in-phone compass so only really works outdoors in areas of good GPS visibility.

The final session before lunch is a panel discussion on destination content and travel services that users are prepared to pay for.

A familiar, trusted editorial voice and brand is the added value over a search based information service say those speaking for Rough Guide and WCity.

Interesting comparison between editorially produced and edited guides and services such as Yelp which gives a sense of place based on user opinion.

Discussion in the room suggests that most people would prefer to pay for trusted, valuable content where relevant, rather than rely on possibly less-trustworthy user generated content, even when free.

I’m reminded of recent discussions in the UK over local journalism in print and on the web, will paywalls work around news, and so on.

I wonder if this has something to do with the fact that the purchase of a trusted travel guide is always a relatively small additional cost in comparison to the cost of the overall trip, however cheap.

A free UGC based where user opinion is valuable such as a restaurant review might be a good supplement to a straightforward history of Buckingham Palace for example.

The afternoon kicks off with a panel discussion on the topic of “The threat and opportunity of ‘free’ services” involving Philip Gontier from Multiplied Media, Joel Grossman from Wavemarket and Nick Black from CloudMade.

Initial consensus that ‘free’ has driven awareness and consumer take-up of location services which has allowed non-free models to develop due to the increased user basis.

‘Freemium’ is a word that I’ve never heard before, but seems to refer to a model whereby developers get a bunch of code for free, but then pay for more functionality.  I think.

Another question, is it realistic for free mobile applications to deliver enough in advertising revenue to make it worthwhile from a business point of view.

An example of an app that had 500,000 downloads but only generated about £2,000 over 6 months.

Sounds obvious but the point is made that it’s better to have less users on a more focused, relevant app than large numbers of downloads that doesn’t translate into users.

Plenty more discussion about business models and advantages and disadvantages of free services in the market dominated the rest of the afternoon.

Around mapping it was suggested, and pretty much agreed, that base layer mapping would become free (following the model of OpenStreetMap for example) and the ‘free-ness’ would start drifting up through the chain with more and more location based data becoming available for nothing.

David Gordon, from Intel, summed up the strategic view quite nicely.

“Free is inevitable”, he said, it’s just matter of which services become free first and how businesses and individuals move around to find areas that have revenue potential.

Potentially threatening from a business point of view but genuinely exciting from an industry perspective – a world with free data, free tools, free location awareness, and free connectivity… but when?