Get a Fwix on Your Location

Fwix, a social news site that launched last summer, has just launched a local search iPhone app (via TechCrunch). It will be an all-in-one local app that aggregates latest news, blog posts, Yelp reviews, crime reports and other info that can be pre-filtered by users’ preferences.

The user interface will be based on a map (including a heat map of activity) as well as a list view that offers the “news feed” format that has been popularized by social networks such as Facebook. In this case, it’s a news feed for the geography you specify, including meta scrape of things happening around you. It will also tie in to Yahoo’s Fire Eagle to get automatic location updates.

Overall, the continued growth of the mobile Web will be a boon for location-based content delivery like this — by virtue of the portability and location awareness of the device. Demand will grow for all kinds of things that are inherently local, such as news, weather, listings and reviews, as well as some video and blogs.

Through this, we’ll see more and more content geotagged, which could be a growth driver for companies that are aggregating things based on location, such as MetaCarta, Placeblogger, Outside.in and many more. In terms of data, it could also have implications for companies working to define the boundaries on more of a hyperlocal level, such as Urban Mapping.

Regardless of the value chain that they will support, expect many more location-based mobile apps to continue to roll out for iPhone, Android and others. We’ll see lots of competition and consumer choice (and fragmentation), as we do in online local search.

Fwix has social features to sync up with nearby friends, putting it in direct competition with other social local apps such as Loopt, Latitude and uLocate’s Buddy Beacon. The local meta-search angle also puts it in the same category as uLocate’s Where and a few others.

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Get Fwix in the iTunes Store here.