Smart Phones To Begin Tracking Your Every Move

As features such as Facebook’s Places and Google’s Latitude increase  location-tracking marketing tactics, consumers can expect to become a part of the new functionality, whether they like it or not.

“Location will be one of the cornerstones of mobile advertising. Merging local businesses with mobile [advertising] is very, very, important for us,” said Michael Slinger, who is the director of mobile advertising for Google.

According to Graham Christie, commercial director of Big Mobile, a mobile marketing agency, “We can give people more of what they want, when they want it and less of what they don’t want. It takes the guesswork out of a lot of advertising.”

The same sort of targeted advertising one sees over the Internet, might be headed to a smart phone near you.

“If you look at the Internet and mobile phones, it’s really only the simple things that work,” said Jamie Conyngham, a developer of mobile apps. “When Amazon reduced the number of clicks it took to buy a book or a DVD, they saw their business grow. Mobile needs to be even easier than that.

Colin Jacobs, a privacy expert at the Electronic Frontiers Australia, says the new technology is sure to infringe on people’s privacy.

“It wouldn’t take long to work out where you are and where you live,” said Jacobs. “I’m not suggesting that someone is going to fire a missile at your house but finding out where you live is very sensitive information to be handled by third parties. I think we’d better get used to living in an age of less privacy.”