Pocket Life , the geo-location social network initially created out of Vodafone’s Innovation lab in Australia, has released its new Facebook app, bringing real-time geo-location integration to Facebook.
The release, just in time for the f8 Facebook developer conference which starts this Wednesday, is a market first according to the makers, Pocketweb.
The app was actually released quietly today and will be officially launched later on in the week.
The way the app works is simple and intuitive.
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It allows users of Pocket Life to share all their location information with their friends on Facebook no matter whether it was added via the Pocket Life web site, the Pocket Life iPhone app or the new Facebook app.
That information includes:
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Their real time location from their mobile phone
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Places that have been added to Pocket Life
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Geo tagged photos
Below are some screenshots so you can see the app in action:
Pocketweb CEO Hanno Blankenstein had this to say about the launch:
“The integration of the Pocket Life platform into Facebook allows users to share their real time locations, geo-tagged photos and geo-messages with their connected friends or to check-in to places.”
“Using a granular Sharing Control concept users are always in control of their privacy. Unlike Loopt the Pocket Life integration works globally and unlike apps such as Nokia OVI facebook app, this service takes the real-time and continuously updated GPS location of a user and puts it into a social media context on facebook.”
CTO Tony Culshaw added :
“The integration of our Pocket Life platform with the Facebook APIs opens up numerous ways to provide useful features and connect facebook users with mobile solutions.”
The other very relevant angle to this is that Pocketweb are offering white-labelled versions of the app built on the Pocket Life platform.
Pocketweb CMO Alexander Koeppen explains this a little more:
“This solution provides businesses and brands the opportunity to quickly bring their location based assets onto facebook including their customers’ real time locations and their geo-tagged places, photos and messages. A great way to better connect with 400 million facebook users.”
It’s taken a while, but finally it seems that we’ll start seeing the real marriage of traditional and location-based social networks.
Should be interesting to see how this affects the growing location-based services market.
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