Mobile 2.0 Europe startup #8: NearYoo brings location-based services to just about any phone

NearYoo is a strange service. The “strange” part comes from the fact that it wants to bring location-based services to regular mobile phones, which lack GPS. Moreover, they are not relying on cellular triangulation, but leave it to the users to say where they are at the moment.

NearYoo bets that the wide popularity of the hash tag (#) will make users also use location tags aka “locatags“.

For instance when you want to say that you’re going to Barcelona, you would type:

I’m going to >Barcelona

NearYoo’s servers would then process “>Barcelona” and add your location to the map, so that other people (your buddies) could see where you are through a web interface. Their plan is, if they succeed, that these new tags become a new habit of mobile users.

If some large company backs them heavily I could maybe see this flying in emerging markets. Otherwise, I doubt people will prefer to use SMS over a graphical user interfaces for their social networking, but you never know…