Location-based service sites -- such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places -- may seem like the hottest new platform online service on the block, but adoption is still relatively small, a new survey finds.

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"Location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla are relatively new, so we were not very surprised that only four percent of online adults have used this type of location-based service," the report's lead author Kathryn Zickuhr told TechNewsDaily.

"It's interesting to note that the demographic breakdown of these location-service users looks pretty similar to all early adopter cohorts. It will be interesting to see how it evolves."

The latest survey revealed that seven percent of adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service. Meanwhile, eight percent of online adults ages 18-29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.

Hispanics who are online are more likely to use these services (10 percent) compared to Caucasians (three percent) and African Americans (five percent).

"Our data from the past couple of years have also shown that minority Americans lead in mobile Internet access, especially in connecting to the Internet using handheld devices," Zickuhr said.

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