Exploring the social implications of location based social networking: an inquiry into the perceived positive and negative impacts of using LBSN between friends

Location based social networking (LBSN)

applications are part of a new suite of emerging social

networking tools that run on the Web 2.0 platform. LBSN is

the convergence between location based services (LBS) and

online social networking (OSN). LBSN applications offer users

the ability to look up the location of another “friend” remotely

using a smart phone, desktop or other device, anytime and

anywhere. Users invite their friends to participate in LBSN

and there is a process of consent that follows. Friends have the

ability to alter their privacy settings to allow their location to

be monitored by another at differing levels of accuracy (e.g.

suburb, pinpoint at the street address level, or manual location

entry). This paper explores the impact of LBSN upon society,

especially upon trust between friends. The study used focus

groups to collect data, and a qualitative approach towards

analysis. The paper concludes that while there are a great

many positive uses of LBSN, there are some significant

problems with current applications, and that better design is

required to ensure that these technologies are not exploited

against a user to commit harm.