Face Book

The Integration of Local Based Service (LBS) targets the potential of $13 billion dollars market, is expected to bring large sums of revenue to social network website.

ABI Research pointed out that Local Based Service (LBS) market is expected to grow more than 13 billion dollars with 5 years, and Facebook and MySpace these two social network website will be important driving force.

With more and more network functions on the cell phone, mobile social network applications become very popular. Research firm estimates that by 2013, more than 82 million people will connect to the social network website by using mobile devices.

Facebook and MySpace are the two largest social network giants, and both eager to start on the mobile phone market. Facebook’s iPhone applications have already been top downloaded software, while there are 400,000 people downloaded the MySpace’s Blackberry service within one month.

However, both of social network sites have not yet integrate geographic information to mobile applications, which also let some smaller social network website, like Loopt and Brightkite have survive space. But experts believe that soon Facebook and MySpace will develop numbers of LBS, such as the search for a friend, geographical indications (geo-tagging), and the integration of LBS will be a new profit source for social network site.

“Multimedia-oriented GPS mobile phone is the mainstream of industry, but other types of mobile phone is also very important,” ABI Research director Dominique Bonte said in a statement: “The concept of mobile networking through built-in GPS receiver has become practical, for example, The local based information service from GYPSii can support Moblin-based Intel Atom MID. ”

Bonte also said navigation devices will be the best choice for location-based internet service. For example, the navigation from Japanese car maker Nissan’s Carwing car can allow users to share information like car fuel consumption detail.

Edited By Henry Lu