In case you missed it, last week I started covering this topic with a brief introduction to what will become at least a 8-10 part series.  I'd love to say that it was a long planned topic, but like most interesting ones, it started with something more personal - being offline for a few days and stepping back into inboxes at capacity.

In this second part on the topic of targeting communications, I wanted to cover location awareness and how it plays into filtering out irrelevant content.  I'll use a couple of examples in discussing the topic, while deftly skirting the whole privacy minefield - I'll step into that in another post.

I tend to classify location information about a person into two types:

1. Static - Requires some type of user action for an update, and includes services such as:

• HR and other corporate systems which would provide location information such as primary office location, home address and the like
• Location based social networking sites which require some kind of check-in: Foursquare, Gowalla, Scvngr, Facebook Places, Google Latitude, Yelp, etc.
• Geotags contained in posts: Twitter updates, Flickr posts, etc.
• Location based (just in time) chat services: Yobongo
• Travel information: Aggregated in TripIt, Tripcase, or feeds from sites where travel was booked
• Schedule information: Out of office auto-replies, shared calendars, on-call & shift rotation records



2. Dynamic - No end user action required, kept updated automatically and would include services such as:

• Mobile phone location - either GPS or cell tower localization driven
• Local positionining - WiFi, Bluetooth, RFID, NFC
• Location based social networking sites (or their derivates) with auto check-in capabilities: Future check in, Checkmate

How could all of this data be used for more effective communication? Here is one example:

Emergency communication as part of business continuity plan, such as evacuating a building.

Traditional approach:

• Send out a message blast to everyone (using email, SMS, voice, smoke signals) to a list of people who are supposed to work in the building, or to totally CYA, just send it to everyone in the company.
• Problem #1: If you sent it to everyone in the company, you cause a secondary effect of pandemonium when people start caling their coworkers to make sure they are OK.  Also, you can only cry wolf with the "EMERGENCY" in the subject line for so long before people start to ignore you.
• Problem #2: If you sent it to a list of people - who keeps that list current to make sure that you have everyone who works in the building covered?  What about temps and contractors?  Partners?  People who are working from this building for just a week or two?
• Essentially you either go to broad broad in your message, or you miss people.  Both are ineffective and potentially dangerous.



Location aware approach:

• Send a message to everyone who is in the building
• Determining who gets the message is a just-in-time activity that takes advantage of the best information available at the time
• Start with dynamic location information based on who badged into the building and is currently inside
• Extend outward with static location data about who is supposed to be the building but for whom dynamic location information may not be available
• Secondary communications can be triggered using organizational information about everyone who is in the building, notifying their supervisors as well, for example

Location information can not only drive targeting the people, but can also be used to make the content more relevant as well as governing what response and engagement options should be presented to a user.

There are lots of other potential scenarios where it could be used, but instead of turning this blog post into a short novel, I'll open up the floor for more via comments.  I'll update the blog post with with the best ideas.  Here are some seeds if you'd like to build them out:

- Engaging IT field services engineers based on their proximity to incidents

- Connecting people with similar interests together for events

- Sending out reminders (and coupons) to customers when they are near specific locations

- Directing flow of people at major events

- Location based marketing

- Traffic alerts & rerouting

Abbas Haider Ali.