While many people are still uncomfortable with sharing their location online, there are many other ways that location data can be used. Take for example the new app from OK Magazine, the OK Celeb Spotter.
For those unfamiliar with it, UK published OK is the kind of magazine that prints pictures of minor TV stars’ weddings, royals at parties and the like. It’s not for everyone but there’s a huge audience for this kind of thing. Now the magazine’s publisher, Northern & Shell has released an iPhone app that is essentially a location-based guide to celebrity hangouts and misdemeanors. The app uses the iPhone’s location services to help you locate nearby celebrity haunts and find out which big names like to hang at them.
Northern & Shell could really be onto something here. The app costs £1.79 in the UK iTunes store [iTunes link] but has features designed to make it easy for users to feed potential news stories back to the magazine. Users can chat to staff writers via Twitter from the app and if they spot a celebrity, they can upload a geotagged image which may end up getting used in the magazine. We assume the amateur paparazzos that use the app won’t get paid for their efforts, indeed they’re actually paying for the app, making a win-win situation for OK’s editors.
We can’t imagine this being much use in the wilds of Scotland, but if you frequent certain areas of London and have a soft spot for celebrities (or just like stalking them) this could be the app for you.
Not an app, but Gawker caused a bit of a stir with their ‘Gawker Stalker’ celebrity sighting maps back in 2006…
http://gawker.com/160338/introducing-gawker-stalker-maps
Another excellent app for celebrity spotting is Celeb Spotter (http://www.cspotter.com) that’s big in the US and focuses on Hollywood. Created by Hooray (http://www.hooraysociety.com) the app is the first celebrity platform to bring attention to their real-time whereabouts and activities. ’CSpotter,’ gives celebrities, luminaries, tastemakers, and renowned individuals an opportunity to expand their fame by posting details on where they are, what they are doing, where they are going, and parties and events in the works.
nice