This week, Kraft Foods can safely say it's ahead of the game. The company launched a very clever, and likey-soon-to-be-copied, Web campaign for the Toblerone chocolate bar. It features an interactive widget that connects to Twitter and displays a real-time feed of messages containing the word "Toblerone" with positive descriptors such as "love", "delicious", "yummy", or "best". The result is a never-ending supply of favourable endorsements from real-life customers who, by their own inspiration, say things like "A Toblerone bar now sits delightfully in my tummy. Yummy" or "I love chocolate. Toblerone is the best!!"

It's an excellent example of how businesses can use social networking for their benefit. But it's limited. A company can search Twitter or Facebook for mentions of its brand, but then what? The answer to that question is "location, location, location". If you can find out where a person is when he discusses your product, it opens up a wealth of information and new ways to engage him as a potential customer.

This week, Twitter officially added location as a feature to its service. A user can now append his location, from either GPS or IP address, to each message he posts. When others click on the linked data, it appears on Google Maps. Next month, Facebook is expected to announce its own location-based features, both for its own network as well as third-party apps. And of course, Google has already been playing in this space with the Latitude and Google Buzz services.

The sudden rush to get every tweet and status update tied to a specific location may be inspired by the growing success of Foursquare and Gowella, two up-and-coming networks built on the idea of tracking the movements of its users. Each time a user enters a defined space; a restaurant, a store, a movie theatre; he can use mobile GPS to "Check in" with the network for possible rewards: badges on Foursquare, virtual items on Gowella. The rising popularity of both services proves that a substantial number of people are willing to be tracked for the right kind of interactivity.

This week, Foursquare began testing a new service that will offer businesses detailed analytics based on the check in data generated by its network. Daily, weekly, and even monthly reports can reveal not only how many unique users checked into a retail location, but the male-to-female ratio, what social media services they are connecting to, who the top users are, and a breakdown of activity across different times in the day. The service will also include a system where employees can reach out to users through Foursquare to offer specials, promotions, and virtual rewards that can be tied into real-world purchases. Of course, users have the capability to opt out of sharing their location data. But the nature of Foursquare is that it only works if people do.

While this allows local businesses to gain more insight into their customer flow, it also allows brands to perform analytics too. When Kraft Foods searches the network for mentions of its Toblerone bar, the company will soon be able find out where people are buying or eating the chocolate treat, and identify which areas or times of the year to launch new campaigns. Retailers can be identified through Foursquare to reach out to customers with their own special promotions or campaigns, to encourage restaurants to use Toblerone chocolate in their desserts, or as part of a customer rewards program.

The trick, of course, will be in discovering ways to encourage people to record their GPS data, and one of the popular areas being explored is Augmented Reality, technology that allows users to see location-specific information through a camera. Two Canadian companies have just launched mobile apps that combine augmented reality with local search, allowing users to use the cameras built into their mobile phones to point-and-search, find a location, and then see which direction it is within the camera's view.

Calgary-based Multiplied Media Corporation offers Poynt, an app for iPhones and BlackBerry devices that brings up detailed listings based on searches for businesses, persons, restaurants, and movie theatres. In landscape mode, iPhone users can access an "AR Mode" that shows results as little icons within the camera view. As users point the camera, the icons slide and change based on digital compass readings to show which direction the user needs to travel in.

Burnaby-based Canpages offers Canada Eye, an iPhone app that uses a similar camera system, but for a larger selection of categories, from ATMs and florists, to coffee shops and women's clothes outlets. Users can even create their own categories and, in each case, the results are displayed within the camera as on-screen icons tied to specific points on a compass dial at the bottom.

These systems use Augmented Reality to encourage users to leverage GPS to find where they're going, but what about when they arrive? How do you encourage someone to "check in" at a store or restaurant?

Zentium, a South Korean-based company may have the answer with iKat, the first augmented reality pet. A 3D holographic kitten, iKat exists as if in the real-world, but can only be seen when you look for him through the camera in your phone. Special tracking software allows the virtual kitten to wander over real objects in your world. This means that iKat can recognize and interact with the furniture of a restaurant or store. He can play across the surface of a menu or hide behind the condiments. More importantly, as a user places an order for food, he can also place an order for a meal or toy for iKat. Of course, he'll have to "Check in" using GPS data and I hear iKats looove Toblerone bars.

Article Tags:  location, users, based, toblerone, camera, foursquare, people, network, check, course, encourage, chocolate, company, reality, augmented, businesses, allows, restaurant, world, icons, specific, virtual, rewards, store, mobile, service, twitter, search, go