• TechCrunch, Monday, December 14, 2009 1:59 PM

TechCrunch takes a close look at the white-hot area of location-based services and social platforms, and addresses a few challenges looming over the industry. First, there's Facebook, which is developing its own location-based technology that is sure to displace rival services. There's also the contention that the average consumer will most likely only want to share their real-time location with, at most, a few dozen "friends" -- a likelihood that severely limits the growth of related tracking services.

That, according to TechCrunch writer MG Siegler, points to a larger problem he's starting to notice with these location services: "The more people you follow on them, the less useful the service is." Rising stars in the space include Foursquare, which was founded by Dennis Crowley, who previously co-founded Dodgeball -- a similar service that was acquired by Google in mid-2005, and then closed down earlier this year; Stalqer -- a curiously named location-based social network that has been described as "Foursquare on steroids"; and Gowalla, which just raised $8.4 million in a second round of funding led by Greylock Partners.

Read the whole story at TechCrunch »