87.5%

Earlier this month Forrester Research announced that only 6% of U.S. mobile phone owners use a location based application although that figure is up 3x from 2% in 2010 (coincidentally Foursquare announced the day prior that their user base had grown 3x from 2010 to 15 million). That said the word is clearly getting out among mobile users.  A year ago only 16% of online adults said that they were familiar with apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla, or Loopt. That number has grown 87.5% over 12 months to 30% in 2011. Obviously this space represents a significant opportunity for growth which is not lost on companies and investors alike as investment dollars continue to flood the geo-social industry segment.

Related articles:

• 2011 holiday season discounts (marshallstanton.com)
• Apple’s share of mobile advertising (marshallstanton.com)
• Social media marketing dilemma (marshallstanton.com)
• Cloud technology solutions (marshallstanton.com)
• Local search by the numbers (marshallstanton.com)