One of the most exciting new trends both in mobile technology and social media is location awareness.  The ubiquity of GPS and smartphones has created the perfect storm for an entirely new breed of mobile applications that are based on a user’s physical location within a city.   Services like Fourquare and Gowalla are battling for market share in the booming market, and businesses are starting to participate in the medium.

But what about politics? If it’s easy to understand why a retailer or nightclub would want people to know where it is and who’s there, it is perhaps more difficult  to understand why a politician would want to broadcast his or her whereabouts?

Three main reasons come to mind:

1. To advertise their tour efforts.  Services like Foursquare can announce to friends (and also to Twitter/Facebook followers) one’s whereabouts.  That’s a great way for a candidate to show that they are out and about, meeting people and attending events.  One of the most common complaints politicians hear is that they didn’t visit a particular neighbourhood or event — a public microblog detailing a candidate’s whereabouts can help demonstrate a busy schedule of events and momentum.

2. To promote the location of their campaign HQ. Because each “check in” is linked to a real, physical address, each check-in to a campaign HQ made by a volunteer or by candidates themselves draws attention to that location.  As election day nears, more and more people will be exposed to check-ins at a campaign office from other friends and contacts.

3. To meet with constituents and voters. While some politicians prefer to limit their exposure to voters to more formalized meetings and settings, others prefer to be “on” 24/7.  For these people, using services like Foursquare to publicly update their whereabouts could allows members of the public to seek them out for questions or information. 

More about the political campaign and advocacy use of location-based services.