Usage patterns of FriendZone: mobile location-based community services

ABSTRACT

How do users accept, and use, for a long period of time, location based services (LBS) on their mobile handsets? FriendZone, a suite of mobile Location-based Community Services has been launched. The services included Instant Messaging and Locator (IM&L), Location-based Chat, and Anonymous Instant Messaging (AIM), with supporting Privacy Management.A 21 month usage survey of more than 47,000 users, most of them young adults, followed by user interviews, is reported herein. The results indicate that AIM is the most popular and used service, more than IM&L, with lower use of Chat. The interviews showed that young adults are interested in immediate stimulations and therefore use AIM, which could lead them to face-to-face meetings. In addition, IM&L is limited to one carrier and hence is less attractive. Lastly, young adults using this service are more interested in sharing their location than in their privacy.

REFERENCES

• 1: AxisMobile, <u>http://www.axismobile.com</u>
• 2: Erin Bradner , Wendy A. Kellogg , Thomas Erickson, The adoption and use of “BABBLE”: a field study of chat in the workplace, Proceedings of the Sixth European conference on Computer supported cooperative work, p.139-158, August 1999, Copenghagen, Denmark
• 3: Bruckman A., Resnick M., The MediaMoo Project: Constructionism and Professional Community, Convergence, 1, 1, Spring 1995.
• 4: Assaf Burak , Taly Sharon, Analyzing usage of location based services, CHI '03 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, April 05-10, 2003, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA [doi>10.1145/765891.766100]
• 5: Fernanda B. Viégas , Judith S. Donath, Chat circles, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.9-16, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.302981]
• 6: EMC World Cellular Database, <u>http://wcis.emcdatabase.com</u>
• 7: Freever, <u>http://www.freever.com</u>
• 8: FriendZone, <u>http://www.friendzone.ch</u>
• 9: Grinter R. & Eldridg, M., y do tngrs luv 2 txt msg?, ECSCW01, p. 219, 2001.
• 10: James D. Herbsleb , David L. Atkins , David G. Boyer , Mark Handel , Thomas A. Finholt, Introducing instant messaging and chat in the workplace, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503408]
• 11: InirU, <u>http://www.iniru.co.il</u>
• 12: Ellen Isaacs , Alan Walendowski , Dipti Ranganthan, Hubbub: a sound-enhanced mobile instant messenger that supports awareness and opportunistic interactions, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Changing our world, changing ourselves, April 20-25, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA [doi>10.1145/503376.503409]
• 13: Rittwik Jana , Theodore Johnson , S. Muthukrishnan , Andrea Vitaletti, Location based services in a wireless WAN using cellular digital packet data (CDPD), Proceedings of the 2nd ACM international workshop on Data engineering for wireless and mobile access, p.74-80, May 2001, Santa Barbara, California, United States [doi>10.1145/376868.376906]
• 14: Christina L. James , Kelly M. Reischel, Text input for mobile devices: comparing model prediction to actual performance, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.365-371, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/365024.365300]
• 15: Lawson S., AT&T Wireless Help Callers Find Friends, PCWorld.Com, June 26 2002, <<u>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,102269,00.asp</u>
• 16: Milgram S., The small world problem, Psychology Today 1, 61, 1967.
• 17: Mark Perry , Kenton O'hara , Abigail Sellen , Barry Brown , Richard Harper, Dealing with mobility: understanding access anytime, anywhere, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.8 n.4, p.323-347, December 2001 [doi>10.1145/504704.504707]
• 18: Krisela Rivera , Nancy J. Cooke , Jeff A. Bauhs, The effects of emotional icons on remote communication, Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems: common ground, p.99-100, April 13-18, 1996, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada [doi>10.1145/257089.257180]
• 19: Olga Ratsimor , Vladimir Korolev , Anupam Joshi , Timothy Finin, Agents2Go: an infrastructure for location-dependent service discovery in the mobile electronic commerce environment, Proceedings of the 1st international workshop on Mobile commerce, p.31-37, July 2001, Rome, Italy [doi>10.1145/381461.381467]
• 20: Howard Rheingold, The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000
• 21: John C. Tang , Nicole Yankelovich , James Begole , Max Van Kleek , Francis Li , Janak Bhalodia, ConNexus to awarenex: extending awareness to mobile users, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.221-228, March 2001, Seattle, Washington, United States [doi>10.1145/365024.365105]
• 22: Townsend A. M., Life in the Real - Mobile Telephones and Urban Metabolism, Journal of Urban Technology, 7(2), pp. 85--104, 2000.
• 23: Townsend A. M., The Science of Location: Why the Wireless Development Community Needs Geography, Urban Planning, and Architecture, Position Paper for CHI01 Wireless Workshop, 2001.

INDEX TERMS

Keywords:
3G, LBS, SMS, WAP, location-based services, mixed reality, mobile communities, ubiquitous computing