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Telling friends where you are (or not)

As Jordan Viator roams the conference rooms, dimly lit bars and restaurants here at the South by Southwest [1] Interactive conference, she often pulls out her cell phone and uses the Foursquare [2] service to broadcast her location The New York Times reports. Such a service might sound creepy to the privacy-minded. But it came in handy for Ms. Viator when she arrived Friday at a party in a bar called Speakeasy and could not find anyone she knew. Her friends who also use Foursquare could see where she was, and some joined her a few minutes later. “I only share my location with people I am comfortable meeting up with, and when I want to be found,” said Ms. Viator, a 26-year-old communications manager at a nonprofit company. Mobile services like Loopt [3] and Google [4]’s Latitude [5] have promoted the notion of constantly beaming your location to a map that is visible to a network of friends — an idea that is not for everybody. But now there is a different approach, one that is being popularized by Foursquare.

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