Mobile LBS – are we finally believing ?

Despite the Foursquare / Gowalla hype, Mobile LBS really isn’t a new thing. But, it seems like this time are buying it ! Yet there’s nothing innovative in Foursquare’s service. The confidentiality issues remain, but apparently the fact that firing up the application lets you win mayorships or medals or points somewhat make things acceptable by those who have been criticizing previous LBS service.
Yet the market, fueled by local ads, is a completely new territory to address which may be as big as Google’s Adwords. As usual it’s chicken and egg, nobody really invested in building up local ad networks while there were no real source of traffic for such ads, apparently this is starting to change. It may be the time to start reconsidering the viability of Local Advertisements, which will have special needs in terms of salesforce and sales mechanism that are very different from legacy Internet-based advertisements.
In France, “PagesJaunes” may be on of the few ready for this challenge, with an ability to list and upsale services to local business.