Microsoft Shows off GeoLife VE Social App at TechFest

Because apparently you can’t have a mapping solution without a social layer, Microsoft has been cooking up GeoLife for about a year and testing it out with 112 people. Participants upload their GPS tracks and use those as a base for sharing experiences, places of interest and social interaction.

Per Micorsoft’s Chris Pendleton on his Evangelist blog:

GeoLife is a GPS-data-driven social network on Microsoft Virtual Earth. It is not only a Website where individuals can manage, visualize, and understand their life experience using their own GPS trajectories; it’s also a social networking service that enables people to build connections with each other based on location histories.

Now, this is a whole different can of worms than “share your current location” popular on many networks. It’s as I read it a place to share all sorts of paths. And then, “By mining the similarity between peoples location histories, this system can help a user automatically discover potential friends in a community who might share similar interests.” Maybe that’d work. Check out the video.

My gut feeling right now is that the many sites that specialize in walking paths, running routes, bike routes, hiking trails, etc. are even better places to build successful social networks. Alternatively of course, you can do it the old fashioned way, by joining the local biking, running, hiking club… or starting one!