Andrew Nimick - Technology consultant Andrew is an independent technology consultant whose focus is what technology can do for business and finding the best tools for the job.

The new social battle is on, and it is for your location. Yes everyone wants to know where you are.
Location awareness has been around for a while, both via devices and by ‘check in' systems such as FourSquare.

The idea is that you can tell people where you are and if anyone you know is nearby then you can grab a coffee. Or tell your friends about a venue.
To be honest I am a little ludite about this, but that's my healthy dose of paranoia coming out again. Why would I want to tell everyone where I am?
It's not everyone, at least not for all your check-ins. And many of us do it on Twitter or Facebook anyway.
And it is Facebook which has drawn the battle lines. You can now check in to your check-in service of choice via Facebook as it has a new service called ‘Places'.
500 million people all saying here I am, this is where I go and this is what I am doing.
Let's think about that, you are a business and suddenly you are not advertising to the potential customers, they are advertising to you. They are advertising their likes and dislikes, their movements.
You have a great coffee shop in the CBD and it's on Google Maps and FourSquare, it has a Facebook page and a website linked from those. Now any user of those services can see you and your offering. Great so far, but it's still passive advertising from you to the potential customer.
It is passive because it is just you talking about you – but with a check-in service your customers are talking about you.
Think of it as the book reviews on Amazon.com, but about your service or product.
Users of the service will search to see if other people have used it and what they thought.

Why would they do this? Well FourSquare has made it fun, and because people do like to share, and given a means they do want to write good as well as bad things. Even if they do not write something, just the number of check-ins does say something, especially the repeats. Which get people awards like Mayor.

There are 26 listed venues in Tauranga. Is one of them yours?