Mobile phone positioning technology will become a catalyst for social networks

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According to reports from foreign media on February 14th, Beijing time, experts say that thanks to a new mobile positioning technology, users of social networks such as Facebook will be able to share the exact geographical locations of their friends in real time from now on. Analysts point out that this technology will also bring new business opportunities to advertisers. 　　Gypsii is a social networking site that was launched this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona; its users can search for friends in a particular neighborhood or in the waters near where they are sailing. ““Look, this is my friend Bill, who is currently in New York, 3,800 miles away,” said ToonWee, a manager at Gypsii, pointing to a small icon in the Manhattan area on the website map. This latest technological software is currently available only on high-end smartphones; users can search for friends, locations, and events in their area, and they can also share pictures, videos, and audio files with their friends. 　　Dan Harple, founder of the Gypsii website and CEO of the company, said, “Real-time location sharing technology gives social networks a completely new look.” Gypsii is compatible with other major social networking sites; its core location tracking feature can be transferred to the user’s Facebook page, where it displays the location information of the user’s friends as well as the user’s own location. 　　Dan Winterbottom, an analyst at IT research firm Informa, said that social network users will certainly be interested in information regarding the locations of their friends. 　　There are usually two ways to determine the location of a mobile phone: the first method is to use the GPS chip in the phone, which relies on a satellite network and wireless communication systems spanning the Earth to identify the phone’s location ； The second method is the triangular distance measurement technique: the phone sends signals to nearby base stations, and by determining the time it takes for these signals to reach different base stations, the location of the phone can be determined. 　　Experts point out that mobile positioning technology is very straightforward, and to date it has given rise to a large number of innovative applications in the mobile industry. Examples include applications for personal navigation, tracking children’s locations, and combating **tism, which were showcased by operators and application developers at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 　　For advertisers, positioning technology can also be a powerful tool, allowing them to use it to target local potential customers in a particular area with their advertisements. Singapore’s wireless operator M1 has attempted to deliver text advertising messages to users within 100 meters of a commercial area in the city center. Company M1 states that users can also set to reject such ads.