Location-based services are similar in some respects to status updating services such as Twitter, in which users communicate by short messages sent online or by text. Status updating services have grown in popularity over the past few years, from 6% of online adults saying they had used such a service in August 2008 to 24% in September 2010.

Internet users who use social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace and those who use status-update services such as Twitter also have relatively high levels of location-based service usage:

• Among online adults, 62% use a social networking site such as Facebook, MySpace, or LinkedIn. Of these social networking site users, 6% use a location-based service.
• 24% of online adults use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others. Ten percent of these status update site users use a location-based service, over twice the rate of the general online population.