by Ben Allen

• Added February 26, 2010

If you follow mobile, or marketing very closely you’ve probably seen the press or even used Location Based Social Networking (LBSN) aka Geosocial Networking applications. Over the past years there have been a ton of them popping up, with folks like Socialight and Loopt as some of the first. But the list ballooned to literally hundreds if not thousands over the past year… Claudio Schapsis is an LBS industry veteran who has been following the trend, and has been keeping a great list .

Needless to say they can’t all survive and flourish as stand alone entities, and many have already stopped trying to run their own social networks altogether, and have turned to developing a platform out of all their hard work. Now they’re looking to market those platforms to other corporate marketers who want to leverage some of those features in their business.

There are far too many to review each one, and the industry is in such a state of flux that its hard to say who is on what strategy at any particular point in time, but off the top of my head a few of the companies that, last I checked, are looking down the platform-ization path for their LBSN’s include GyPSii, Socialight, and Match2Blue.  

How could a LBSN platform be useful in your marketing efforts?  I’ve picked out a few of the more interesting examples that caught my eye:

- Lufthansa is an active innovator in mobile, at its core using it for booking and boarding functions. But they also recently worked with a LBSN platform provider to extend social networking functions to create a community around their frequent fliers program. Customers can interact with each other to meet up with fellow travelers' with like interest on a long layover,  tap into other travelers insights when visiting a new city or maybe get real time information about how to best navigate the airport. They even have a taxi sharing function that might save their customers a few bucks on the ride into town.

- A company called SCVNGR has developed a mobile social gaming offering using location which they’re specifically targeting to trade conference attendees and organizers. The platform gets everyone more engaged and social through the use of a little scavenger hunt mobile gaming fun that anyone at the conference can play.

-  Socialight has created a concierge product that allows hotels and tourism businesses to easily create their own custom branded mobile concierge service that helps guests to explore the city on their visit, and to better connect with the hotel and fellow visitors in the process. Such a platform could be valuable in pointing out nearby partner businesses (sister hotels or other nearby businesses where you can earn loyalty points) and to encourage repeat and friends and family visits by saving and sharing itineraries, and things to do.