Charley Hayes, a public relations practitioner and social media strategist at Onlinefire, says that Location Based Services are set to take off in 2010.

In 2009 we saw the rise of user-friendly location-based services (LBS), but in 2010 location-sharing is set to come into its own.

This year, PRs who are in the know will be actively exploring the opportunities that GPS-aware services can offer, devising new and creative ways to capture consumer attention in a far more tailored and targeted way than ever before.

Last year saw the emergence of LBS and social community integration. South African social network The Grid launched Mobikasi, a 24-episode, location-based documentary about youth culture in Soweto.  Content was geo-tagged to the location where it was shot, enabling viewers to explore Sowetan culture by travelling through a mobile street map and watching video clips. This marriage of LBS and crowd-sourcing was hailed as the next generation of mobile social media.

In fact, the recent explosion of mobile applications has brought the advent of location-based app integration. Layar is a great example of this new trend. Winner of the Vodafone Mobile Startup Challenge in September 2009, the Layar browsing application is a mix of location-based technology and augmented reality. Combining a handset’s camera and GPS functionality, the mobile application overlays information relevant to digitally tagged real-world locations or items – from coffee shops to museums.

The advancement of LBS can be seen with the growing popularity of companies such as Foursquare and Gowalla, which enable consumers to tag and share content quickly and easily within social communities. The technology not only enriches existing core services, but also creates a more dynamic and compelling consumer offering.

The delivery of highly personalised brand messages, in the most relevant and creative way possible is the keystone of social media PR and the development of LBS looks set to raise the bar in 2010.

Charley Hayes is a public relations practitioner and digital PR specialist with wide ranging client experience; from technology to travel and sports to drinks, in both business-to-business and consumer sectors. A social media strategist at Onlinefire, Charley has worked across online PR campaigns for Virgin Media, Panasonic and the Post Office.