Social Networking on the Move!

Hi everyone.

I just wanted to share this article with you which shows some huge developments in the social networking scene. A social network site called Bliin is using advanced technology using GPS (global positioning satellite) and mobile social networking in order for users to be able to track friend’s whereabouts. The site uses Google maps to project your image onto them and so allows users to track the movements of a friend of colleague. This technology is crazy! If a person is using the social networking site via a mobile phone then the user will actually be able to track second by second the movements of the person they are talking to.

This obviously brings up ethical and moral issues. They have been questions raised by The UK's Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. They are looking at the possibility of the technology being abused. they say "this has significant implications in terms of grooming via mobile social networking sites with offenders potentially able to locate their victims in this way." this is the obvious problem but the technology will work the same way as regular sites such as Facebook and MySpace. They will have settings which enable you to limit who can see your whereabouts as MySpace or Facebook have settings to limit who sees your profile.

The technology is in the testing faze right now but is being further developed by Trackut and Canadian-based Kakiloc. However MySpace and Facebook have released statements saying that they are not currently interested in adding this feature to their sites.

This shows huge developments in the way that social networking is moving on. Whether this is good or bad is down to an individual’s perspective but it shows that social networking has no boundaries and has not reached the limit of growth. It will be interesting to see how this story develops. I will keep you posted of any new news. If you want to check out the full article then click here .