Do people grow out of Location based services?

The New York Times on Location based services:

Venture capitalists have poured $115 million into location start-ups since last year, according to the National Venture Capital Association, and companies like Starbucks and Gap have offered special deals to users of such services who visited their stores.

But for all the attention and money these apps and Web sites are getting, adoption has so far been largely confined to pockets of young, technically adept urbanites. Just 4 percent of Americans have tried location-based services, and 1 percent use them weekly, according to Forrester Research. Eighty percent of those who have tried them are men, and 70 percent are between 19 and 35.

The Fist Generation services (Loopt, Dopplr etc) have by and lerge failed to gain traction. So far what has worked with 2nd generation location based services is game based rewards (eg becoming mayor of a place) but these rewards are ultimately about bribery (eg becoming mayor gets you a free offer). Shopkick plays for the endgame by giving you money off coupons when you shop at a certain shop - it's the online equivalent of newspaper coupon clipouts.

But never fear, the CEO of Loopt claims that people born after 1981 (ie below 30) have lower privacy requirements, and thus a larger demographic will emerge year by year:

“The magic age is people born after 1981," said Sam Altman in a New York Times article. “That’s the cut-off for us where we see a big change in privacy settings and user acceptance.”

So, two contradictory views - the NYT arging that the market is limited, the CEO of Loopt arguing that the only way is up. I have another explanation for the people after 1981 being less privacy aware, and this is simply that they are young and have less to lose - as the NYT notes:

Stephanie Angelucci, who is 30 and lives in North Beach, Md., updates her MySpace page with photos of her babies, news about her health and testaments to her love of sailing. But she won’t use location apps.

“I don’t like broadcasting where we are or when my husband’s gone, just for safety reasons,” she said. And privacy concerns aside, she doesn’t see the need: “We go to playtime, the park and the grocery store. My life isn’t exciting enough to broadcast where I am and what I do.”

In other words, perhaps at (about) 30 people start to have responsibilities, and for various reasons become far less interested in displaying their location.