Facebook, Foursquare, and Gowalla (along with several other companies) now have a little more competition when it comes to location-based check-in services. Starting this afternoon, Google Latitude users can also let their friends know when they’ve arrived at a certain place. Google’s rationale for this upgrade is that check-ins add context. Now, rather than just [...] Read more »
Google Talks Local Search Relevance Factors
Google is placing a great deal of emphasis on local in its search results these days. In fact in many cases, it would appear to significantly reduce the importance of ranking in the regular organic results. Google talked a little about how local search ranking works today in a blog post on its Lat Long [...] Read more »
Facebook Said To Rent Space On Madison Avenue
Google and Facebook are often mentioned in the same breath these days, and now it seems that Facebook, like Google, may be interested in the New York real estate market. Rumor has it Facebook’s leased some space at 335 Madison Avenue. This isn’t quite as impressive as Google’s $1.9 billion purchase of an entire office [...] Read more »
Location-Based Services Too New to Know How They’ll Be Abused
Last week, Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence Sr. Analyst Paul Wood shared some predictions for online threats in the coming year with us. With the increasing emergence of location-based services, we wondered what kind of threats (beyond the obvious) come with this new territory. "One attack that may be predicted is for malware faking location information in [...] Read more »