Pauline was at the Esplanade Hotel - not exactly news to set the world on fire. Using your phone to "check-in" to a café, restaurant, or anywhere else, letting the world see your map location and what you're doing, may seem like a privacy nightmare. But clearly some people can't get enough of the concept, like these people.
It might be easy to pass this off as yet another social networking fad, yet there are signs you might be hearing more about this phenomenon soon.
Specifically, it looks like phone check-in services will be linked to discount voucher services. The idea is that you check-in on your phone, and you'll see all the discounts at shops near you, like half-price clothes sales and buy-one-get-one-free restaurant deals.
This week Google turned on a feature that makes it even easier for Android phone users to check-in wherever they go. Using Latitude, you can now check in to specific locations, like cafes, instead of just a map coordinate.
There is some speculation that Google may be planning to link this to Google Offers, a discount site that's been confirmed by Mashable. It's expected that Google Offers will go up against sites like Groupon that let people in the US signup for daily email with deals in their city.
Facebook already lets overseas users do exactly this: check-in with their phone and see what deals are nearby. Check-in using the Facebook Places feature, and you'll have your location broadcast to your Facebook friends. The vision is that eventually you'll also be able to see businesses offering deals near you. You can already do this in the US, and this week Facebook rolled out deals to the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain.
In Australia you can check-in using Facebook Places, but there's no deals announced yet, though the Facebook site says "many more countries" are on the way.
Here's what Facebook deals look like:
Deals sites like OzBargain and CatchoftheDay are popular, the latter claiming to have 500,000 registered users. Google claims to have 10 million Latitude users, so you can understand why they might want to turn this into a gigantic discount community.
For people already using location services, privacy doesn't seem to be a concern. Jonathan Nguyen, Digital Strategist at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, uses location services to let friends know where he is, and doesn't broadcast his location publicly.
"The fundamental key to all this is choice. I have to physically choose to check in," he said.
"Don't be silly about it. So don't checkin to your home address. Don't friend people or share your location with people you don't know."
Are you comfortable with using your phone to share your location? Add your comment below.
