Investigating Early Adopters’ Use of Location-based Social Networks: Implications for Local Businesses and Service Providers

Social media has been defined by what happens on people’scomputer screens. But what happens when people turn off theircomputers and take social media to the real, physical world? Now,with recent advancements in mobile technology, early adoptersbuild communities around the concept of ‘check-ins’. Theybroadcast their location to friends, learn about other people’swhereabouts, and share location-based information about bars,parks, cities, and virtually any kind of location. We present astudy of 63 early adopters who use location-based social networksin their daily lives and analyze their behavior with respect to theimpact on local businesses as well as service providers. Ourresults show that users derive real value from connectinginformation to location and indicate significant potential forcustomer-to-customer marketing. Further, our findings providesupport for claims to include privacy and context-relatedconstructs into technology acceptance theory