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This week geo-crazy mavens were pleased to hear of location-based updates to Facebook , the launch of Foursquare analytics and of course yesterday's news of Gowalla's comment and picture functionality. So far the most common way to monetize these types of services is through sponsored leader boards and tips on nearby promotions. But the question remains, can local ads really sustain the entire location-based ecosystem? Sponsor Geo-locational services are only now finding a business model and for the first time service providers are forced to think about maintaining the balance between user trust and revenue generation. After all, if there's anything Yelp's class action extortion lawsuit has taught us, it's that communities lose credibility when a thirst for ad revenue sets the tone. Short of selling user data to marketers, below are a few ways companies can monetize while still offering value. Charging Rent : Location-based service MyTown allows users to buy and own their favorite locations and charge virtual rent when others check-in. If MyTown-style services introduced currency exchange like SecondLife's Linden dollar, users would be incentivized through revenue share and app developers could collect a percentage on micro-transactions. Tuángòu : Scoop St. founder Justin Tsang admits that his group buying company is inspired by the Chinese practice of tuángòu or flash mob-style shopping. As a teen, Tsang would organize a group online in order to arrive at a store and barter for a group purchasing discount. The same concept can be monetized in niche shopping sites as users could organize large discount purchases via location-based app. Developers could either charge for the app as a subscription-based directory or charge the store owner for directory listings and referrals. Gifting : Rather than earning badges, Gowalla users pick up and receive virtual items. If startups charged for virtual gifts, users could geocache items for their friends to be unlocked on-site. Better yet, imagine arriving to work on your birthday and finding a friend has geo-cached an album download or video file. Pending approval and check-in by the recipient, these services could form the basis of a lucrative treasure hunt / gifting business. We know we're just skimming the surface here. If you've got more ideas on how startups can monetize location-based services, let us know in the comments below. Discuss

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Beyond Ads: Monetizing Location-Based Services

Our top story this week was location - location-based networks, services, advertising and even "feelings". Read on for our coverage and analysis. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010, including Real-Time Web, Mobile Web and Internet of Things. Note: We've refreshed the format for our longest running feature, the Weekly Wrapup. It now focuses more explicitly on the key trends that ReadWriteWeb is tracking in 2010, as well as giving you the highlights from the leading story of the week. Let us know your thoughts on the new format. Sponsor Story of the Week: Location Can Brightkite Beat Foursquare & Gowalla With a Universal Check-in? Google Patents Location-Based Advertising 2 Services for DIY Mobile Social Networks Google Chrome Becomes Location Aware Can Geosense for Windows Help Kickstart the Development of Location-Aware Apps for Windows 7? Glow: Location-Based "Feelings" for iPhone More coverage and analysis of location-based technology Announcing the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit Join us for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit on May 7 in Mountain View, California as we explore the latest mobile development trends, both the technology and the emerging business applications. Be a part of the discussion on  geo-location services , augmented reality , native app vs. browser-based , commerce and marketing , mobile social networking and the Internet of Things. Sponsorship enquiries: sales@readwriteweb.com , Register now for the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit and get early bird rates - only $295. Mobile Web Watch Out, iPhone Devs: One-Man Android App Nets $13K Monthly Netflix on the iPhone? Yes, Please! Can We Kick Our Keyboard Addiction by 2013? More Mobile Web coverage Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei , Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey , and yours truly, Richard MacManus , ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell , the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City. Internet of Things McKinsey: Get Ready For Sensor-Driven Business Models Ads with Eyes: Keeping Digital Signage in Check Google Wants Your Lamp to Tell You How Much Power It's Using More Internet of Things coverage Real-Time Web Google Index to Go Real Time 10.5 Million WordPress Blogs Get PubSubHubbub Beyond Twitter Search: Semantic Analysis of the Real-Time Web More Real-Time Web coverage . Don't miss the next wave of opportunity on the Web supported by real-time technology! Get ReadWriteWeb's report, The Real-Time Web and its Future . Check Out The ReadWriteWeb iPhone App We recently launched the official ReadWriteWeb iPhone app . As well as enabling you to read ReadWriteWeb while on the go or lying on the couch, we've made it easy to share ReadWriteWeb posts directly from your iPhone, on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow the RWW team on Twitter, directly from the app. We invite you to download it now from iTunes . ReadWriteStart Our channel ReadWriteStart , sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark , is dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs. The Startup Bus: Is This How Outsiders See Startup Culture? Picnik CEO to Startups: The M&As Are Out There Are Crowdsourcing and Outsourcing No-Nos For Startups? ReadWriteEnterprise Our channel ReadWriteEnterprise is devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' and using social software inside organizations. Will StatusNet Be Another Open-Source Star in the Enterprise? Drupal Founder Critical of SaaS and its Proprietary Nature ReadWriteCloud Our channel ReadWriteCloud , sponsored by VMware and Intel, is dedicated to Virtualization and Cloud Computing. Steve Ballmer: Microsoft's Future Is in the Cloud Weekly Poll: What is the Top Threat to Cloud Computing? How Many Enterprise Workers Will Work in the Mobile Cloud? Try 130 Million That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone. Discuss

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Weekly Wrap-up: Location, Location, Location, and More...

The popularity of Twitter has produced a number of clones in China, just as there are Facebook clones . Some of China's Twitter clones have been closed down by the Chinese government, but some have survived. We take a look at both cases in this post. We also assess Twitter's chances of success in China, should it ever be freed from the 'Great Firewall of China.' Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu were some of the first Twitter clones to become successful in China. However all three - plus Twitter itself - were blocked by the Chinese government in July 2009, due to their usage during the uprisings in Ürümqi . Sponsor According to an AFP article , Chinese authorities blamed online agitators for helping to stoke violence in that region. Prior to being shut down, Fanfou had been dubbed "China's Twitter" and had almost reached 1 million registered users by the end of June 2009. An October 2009 report by China Daily noted that Fanfou was founded in July 2007 by Wang Xing, a young entrepreneur who also founded China's current most popular social network Renren (formally known as Xiaonei). Both Renren and Fanfou were almost carbon copies of their U.S. equivalent services - Facebook and Twitter respectively. Weibo Rises to Take Fanfou's Place Since the closure of Twitter, Fanfou, Jiwai and Digu, other services have risen to take their place. Taotao (owned by the company that produces popular IM service QQ) and Zuosa.com are two examples. However it is Weibo that has emerged to become the biggest micro-blogging service in China. It's owned by Sina.com, a big portal company in China. Weibo is very much like Twitter, in that it allows users to post short messages 140 Chinese characters or less via the Web, SMS or MMS. Although according to Chinese Internet expert and Beijing resident Kaiser Kuo , in Chinese 140 characters can actually produce quite a long message. The major difference between Weibo and Twitter, according to Kuo, is that Weibo is censored . Or in the parlance of Chinese Internet users, it is "harmonized." Sina's Weibo probably has a much greater chance of surviving than its counterparts like Twitter and Fanfou, because it knows how to self-censor. Meng Bo, deputy editor-in-chief of Sina.com and project manager of Sina Weibo, told China Daily in October that "Sina is playing by the rules as they are laid down, with strict word filtering in operation." According to Meng, there are two teams of staff "keeping close watch to ensure there is no vulgar content or anything that violates the rules." Would Twitter Succeed in China Anyway? China's surviving micro-blogging services are tightly controlled by the censorship climate in China. However even if Twitter became available again in China, would it take off with mainstream Chinese Internet users? Kaiser Kuo thinks that it wouldn't, because of the popularity of currently operational services like Weibo and Taotao. He remarked that although there would be an uptake in the number of users on Twitter, if it was ever to be made available again, Weibo and others will have gained too much momentum by then. Discuss

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China's Twitter Clones

In times of Internet censorship and governmental interference with citizen Web use, the need for private browsing has never been more apparent or more crucial to political processes. Perhaps in response to its woes in China, Google has reaffirmed its support of online anonymity for political purposes in a recent blog post on Tor, a project it's been supporting extensively lately. Tor allows for safe, anonymous Internet use - it's a project that protects privacy and circumvents censorship in countries around the world. And as companies gather user data - data that can at any time and for any reason be surrendered to law enforcement or government agencies - safeguarding online anonymity becomes an ever more vital concern. Sponsor Last fall, we covered Tor's successful porting to the Android platform . At that time and to this day, continuing to protect users' privacy occupies a lot of time for Tor's volunteers and developers. From the Google blog post : "Why is anonymity online so important? Companies like Google have privacy and opt-out policies, but not everyone has this stance. Corporations, nations, criminal organizations and individuals want your information. Companies collect information on your web browsing habits and sell it or are sloppy when it comes to protecting it from identity thieves. Others can threaten lives, from repressive nations tracking down outspoken journalists, to abusive spouses or stalkers who want to find out where their victims are hiding; from enemy military forces trying to find a communications link, to criminals who know when law enforcement is watching online Even people living in countries where free speech is protected by law need anonymity for political activities. People blogging about political views that differ from the prevailing attitudes in a small community may lose a job or face boycotts if they run a business. In a company town, writing about the misdeeds of the company that employs your neighbors may be dangerous. Telling people about corruption could lead to harassment from guilty officials." This graph shows how, in 2009, use of Tor grew as users scrambled to circumvent firewalls during the elections and subsequent protests and violence in Iran, and in China, as well: Is this blog post a clear and direct "Screw you" to Chinese authorities who would censor Internet access and search results? Or is it a continuation of Google's commitment to protecting the users they profit from? Or a bit of both? Let us know what you think in the comments - and stay tuned for our upcoming chat with Chinese political activist Ai Weiwei and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey . Discuss

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Privacy in an Age of Public Living: Google and Tor

The leading social networking site in China, renren.com, started out as a blatant Facebook clone - but it now has tens of millions of users. Despite obvious similarities to Facebook, there is one significant difference from the U.S. in how Renren and other Chinese SNS are used. The bread and butter of these sites is social games using virtual items. Indeed, Farmville originated in China! In this first post of a series, we outline the most popular social network sites in China. In follow-up posts, we'll look at Twitter clones, online video, and censorship. This series is based on a discussion I had with Kaiser Kuo, a Beijing-based expert on China's Internet. Sponsor Kaiser Kuo is a Chinese-American who lives in Beijing. He currently works for one of China's leading online video services, Youku.com, as a consultant on International Business. Previously he was Group Director, Digital Strategy at Ogilvy & Mather China. There are 3 social networking sites that are clearly in the lead in China, according to Kaiser Kuo. Renren.com is the leading social network. It began as a Facebook clone called Xiaonei.com - which means 'on campus' in Chinese. In August 2009 it changed its name to Renren , which means 'everybody.' Renren had 70 million registered users at that point. The site is owned by Oak Pacific Interactive and has had over $400M pumped into it by investors Softbank. The site was founded in December 2005, shortly after Facebook began to ramp up. Its founder Wang Xing later founded Fanfou, a popular Twitter clone (see our next post in this series). Xiaonei.com was literally a Facebook clone when it started, sporting the same shade of blue and the same layout. ReadWriteWeb guest writer Gang Lu wrote on this blog in June 2008 that Xiaonei.com "was like a simplified version of Facebook in Chinese when it was first launched." He noted that it had "the same layout, same color scheme and even a very similar logo," which he said "made people wonder if there was an official connection with Facebook." Kaixin001.com is another very popular social network. Kaiser said that its users are mostly "white collar middle class" and typically come from a "first tier city." Kaiser noted that Kaixin001.com is extremely popular among people who work for multinational companies, ad agencies and other white collar companies. Accordingly, the site is valuable because of its relatively wealthy user base. The third social network that is very popular in China is 51.com , which Kaiser said is mostly used by people who live in "lower tier cities" and even rural areas. He noted that it has a "lower brow offering." Each of these three hugely popular social networks in China has its own niche; from the mainstream Renren, to the more prestigious Kaixin001, to the populist 51.com. In our next post in this series, we check out China's Twitter clones . Discuss

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China's Top 3 Social Network Sites