EXCLUSIVE: TomTom looking at social network location features

IFA 2010: "Definitely looking at it" says TomTom

EXCLUSIVE: TomTom looking at social network location features

2 September 2010 13:03 GMT / By Stuart Miles

TomTom has told Pocket-lint that it is, "Definitely looking at" the massive boom in location based social networking services like Facebook Places, Foursquare and Twitter.

In an exclusive one to one interview with TomTom's GPS product manager, TomTom confirmed that there were lots of opportunities and that it would be "silly not to be looking at it".

TomTom already offers some forms of social networking via its TomTom Live services, allowing people to interact with the maps and share new updates to help others.

If TomTom were to embrace location social networking, the system could easily be used to share details of parties, favourite restaurants and even your house to save friends trying to punch in specific postcode data into the system.

In fact the idea isn't entirely new. Navman tried it with its NavPix offering, way before companies like Foursquare even existed. The idea was that you could take a picture using the device with a built-in camera and share that location with other users.

However, the system failed due to a lack of adoption in the UK.

Integrating a service like Foursquare or Facebook with its 500m users, shouldn't encounter the same problems.

You can follow all the top tech news coming out of Berlin on our IFA2010 homepage live and as it happens.

Full tags

TomTom, Facebook Places, Foursquare, IFA2010, GPS, Social networking, Car And GPS