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In the early 2010s, location-based social networks (LBSNs) received significant attention from both the public and venture capital. The "LBSN moment" was an important period of early mobile geomedia history, and this article argues that the reverberations of that moment still shape the contemporary social geomedia landscape. This article examines the LBSN moment through a media genealogy approach that views the period as a moment of juncture for the development of social location-sharing, which ended up being dominated by large platforms like Facebook and Uber. The article also draws from research on technological development to push back against narratives of inevitability and argue that specific dynamics of the LBSN moment, particularly the double-edged sword of hype, closed-off avenues for the media form. The article ultimately uses an interventionist genealogical approach to explore different paths that could have been—and still could be—taken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the field of mobile communication studies (MCS) has generally moved away from focusing on how mobile phones distract users from their physical environment to considering how the experience of space and place can be enhanced by locative smartphone applications. This article argues that trajectory may be complicated by the emergence of a new type of mobile technology: mobile virtual reality (MVR). While an increasing number of handsets are specifically developed with MVR in mind, there is little to no research that situates this phenomenon within the continuum of MCS. The intention of this paper is accordingly twofold. First, the article conceptualizes MVR as a connective tissue between the two sequential tropes of MCS: physical distraction and spatial enhancement. Second, the article introduces the concept of 'dislocated space' as a way of understanding the embodied space MVR might configure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location-based services are mobile applications that use a device’s location to provide relevant results. Spatial search applications are a popular subset of location-based services that enable people to search through their surrounding space to find nearby locations. This article examines spatial search applications through a framework that combines critical geography research with research on the power search engines exert over information visibility. The main argument of the article is that popular spatial search applications, such as Yelp, may subtly reproduce existing forms of spatial segregation by rendering certain location invisible through the mobile mapping interface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article extends research on the production of embodied space by focusing on the relations between place and memory. Beginning with a consideration of how wearable technologies enable new spatial practices within the constructed order of the city, we develop a conceptual framework to understand these spatial practices by returning to the rhetorical art of memory and the building of memory palaces. The art of memory, exemplified by memory palaces, offers a rhetorical resource for understanding how smartphones as wearable technologies may be incorporated—that is, brought into the body, as integral to the production of embodied spatial memories. We argue for the memory-palace builder as an inventive rhetorical (and mobile) figure who not only walks but also wears the city, composing and embedding hybrid memories into and onto hybrid places and, thus, providing a coherent way of being and acting in contemporary urban space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Location-based social networks ( LBSNs) are mobile applications that allow people to share their physical location with friends through their mobile device. The sharing of location is a relatively new form of computer-mediated communication, and there is a lack of existing research examining the coordination practices of people using social location sharing services. This article reports on qualitative interviews with frequent users of the LBSN Foursquare to show both how LBSNs complicate views of the relative 'placelessness' of traditional mobile communication and how the design of Foursquare complicates its utility as a mobile coordination tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early theories of the internet imagined that individuals would begin living most of their lives online, decreasing the importance of physical mobility and urban spaces. With the development of internet-enabled mobile phones, these early predictions have been proven false. The internet has not decreased the importance of physical mobility; instead, the digital information of the internet has begun to merge with physical space, leading to new types of hybrid spaces. These hybrid spaces are becoming increasingly common, and they may change the way physical space is negotiated and understood. At this early juncture, however, it is crucial to critically examine the development of hybrid spaces and how they may lead to issues of exclusion and exacerbate issues of access. This essay takes a critical approach to the development of hybrid spaces, arguing that what is often lost in discourses about these new understandings of space are questions of who gets to experience this convergence of the digital and the physical. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]