Upingme (as in, you-ping-me, but you knew that already) has now launched, and I have to say it’s definitely most intriguing.

In a cross between social networking and mobile SMS, in what is apparently a world-first, it delivers a mobile-phone specific location (rather than a more generalised spot triangulated between signal masts).

It allows you to broadcast where you are via texting your location to the given number. This is then sent out on a feed (rather like RSS) to all users who’ve subscribe to your location feed - who can then query your location and see it pinpointed on a Google map.

It strikes me as potentially extremely cool, although it of course does depend on your mates subscribing to your feed for it to actually work…and (not yet played with this to know if it’s do-able) the ability to moderate who subscribes to your location feed, in the event that you’re concerned about stalkers.

Although the service actually positions itself as classified ads via mobile, it’s the exact positioning which seems to be the killer part of the app - I guess time will tell if it actually takes off

[ Via Pocket Lint ]