This hullabaloo about Please Rob Me and Foursquare? All part of the technological, cultural and business development cycle. Instead of getting hysterical, recognize the point it proves and let the innovation cycle continue on.

My comment in response to Alan Patrick, Rob, Rob me do!

The best thing about stuff like Please Rob Me? It creates the reasons and incentives for developers to create location-based-services with greater granularity and control, and perhaps provides incentives for users to actually pay for LBS, as long as users can see the upside of using LBS services.

Think of it like credit fraud protection: we all know credit cards can be hacked and stolen, our identities stolen or faked, but we use these services because of the upside they bring us every day.

When users can see, measure and value the upside impact, then we’ll see some truly robust location-based-services. This is part of the development cycle.

Location-based services, stuff like Foursquare, the downside and upside of public personal data, and the nature of technological and cultural privacy? It’s early days, people.

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Alan, btw, has written *extensively* about privacy and location-based services (and many, many other topics) from many, many angles over the years on his Broadstuff blog, a voice of reason guaranteed to cut through the BS. If you’re interested in an older post with a great comment conversation between Ethan, Alan and I, check out The emerging risks of privacy abuse in location based services.