At last location based services has come to the mainstream, and is being propelled by Google’s new (and free) Latitude location services. It’s about time. Many systems have been toying with the idea for a while, with online dating services like meetmoi.com, match.com’s entrance into the market with skout.com, but the problem with those services are that they exist within the catch 22 of price and volume of people. You need a massive volume of users in order for this system to work, otherwise you’re the only user out standing in an empty corn field.

Google’s Latitude claims several nice features, including location sharing, privacy control, share status and more.

Location sharing starts only when both you and a friend agree. Invite friends via email or easily add them from your Gmail contacts. You can share, set, or hide your location – or turn off Google Latitude – from the privacy menu. You can also hide your location or share only a city-level location with certain friends.

Share status is similar to the very popular Twitter, where you can Create a status message and upload your photo within Latitude. It also syncs directly with Google Talk. You can check your friends’ status messages to see what your friends are up to.

If you’re a very popular person always on the go, such as a college student, this would be a cool thing. You could meet up and see where your friends are quickly. Also it would be a very handy thing while hiking, or on the ski slopes.

Or to be more connected to your close friends so you don’t have to call them as much to still interact. For example, I was over at a friend’s house the other day, and his son came downstairs and opened the front door. His friend was standing there, but didn’t ring the doorbell. I asked him, “Why didn’t you just ring the doorbell?” I dunno, I was here to see my friend, and didn’t want to bother anyone else.”

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Clearly our social behavior is radically being changed with new technology, and it will be very interesting to see what Latitude brings to the table now our movements are visible. So much for the movie 1984 and the fear of always being watched. It’s come true in a way we never anticipated.