Building eCommerce Applications

Chapter 17. The Convergence of Local, Social, and Mobile, Part 3: Mobile

Travis Robertson

It is only fitting that, as I sit here writing the third part of this series, I am doing it from a local coffee shop and bakery, tethered to my Android Evo 4G with Tweetdeck humming along in the background. The only thing that would be more fitting is if I were doing the next (and final) article in this series, where I will actually look at the convergence of local, social, and mobile, and how it will impact our lives moving forward (beyond just the regular trip to a coffee shop to work, I assure you).

For those who are joining us midway through this series, I would encourage you to start at the beginning. After all, for you to understand the implications of the convergence of local, social, and mobile, it helps to appreciate the somewhat siloed nature of those three areas, along with their evolution. That’s what these first few articles examine.

We began with a historical look at the evolution of the concept of local, which you can read here. I wrote about how “local” was initially constrained by geography and travel limitations, but that has lessened primarily due to the rise of mass and personal transportation from the late 1800s through today. In the second piece, I wrote about how “social” evolved from being immediately local in nature to being an “always on” component of our lives, thanks to the evolution of communication technologies (again, primarily communication advances in the last ...