We cornered SimpleGeo founder Matt Galligan yesterday and talked to him about SimpleGeo’s newest hire, Mike’s infamous “What Is It You Do? The Need For Simplicity” post (which focused on the fact that it’s difficult to pinpoint what SimpleGeo actually does) and the difference between a location-based service vs. a location-aware service.
At the center of the geo-locational explosion, SimpleGeo provides infrastructure tools (like a Software Developer Kit) to developers who want to add location services to their apps. Potential clients run the gamut from a huge corporation that wants to integrate “some fancy check-in thing” to homegrown apps that want their app to do something simple like providing data on the weather.
Location is increasingly becoming a layer as opposed to a core feature in web services, much like social has become a layer with the conceptual shift from Friendster to Facebook. Galligan holds that eventually most apps will have to integrate some kind of location element, “It’s no longer the area of location based services, it’s the era of location aware services.
Galligan also underplayed the entrance of social incumbents like Facebook into the location space, “It’s only matter of time before we stop saying ‘Omg they just added location now they’re going to own this’ because the reality is that eveyone is going to use location in this way.”