Gypsii teams up with Telmap to direct LBS development

Location-based mobile social network Gypsii has teamed up with mapping and navigation firm Telmap to develop richer, location-enabled services.

Via the partnership, Telmap will introduce social networking and user generated content to its Telmap5 Mobile Location Companion, offering users access to contacts across social networks including Gypsii, Facebook and Twitter, and the ability to contribute location-aware content, share locations, read and post recommendations, videos, pictures, find friends, events, and places, and geo-blog.

Shane Lennon, senior vice president of marketing & product management at Gypsii, recently spoke to telecoms.com about monetising social networking. Lennon believes that social networking features will drive the viral uptake of apps and pave the way for mobile advertising services.

“Our ultimate model, our long term goal is advertising revenues. E-commerce is now mobile commerce and you have premium content services. We will see lots of talk around advertising. We’re working with navigation players who want in on the ad revenue model and want to enhance their capabilities so people can make more transactions,” Lennon said.

Read the interview with Shane Lennon, senior vice president of marketing & product management at Gypsii

“People also want to connect with people beyond who they know to where they are, who they want to see, what they want to do. It’s more interactive and driven towards application needs that are beyond pull/push such as ‘I want a single piece of information’ or ‘give me a coupon’. This isn’t the kind of research you’re going to do on Google,” he said.