By Mikal E. Belicove|For Entrepreneur.com|April 26, 2011

Business owners who anticipate that geosocial services like Facebook Places, Google Latitude, Foursquare, SCVNGR, and Gowalla will be the next best way to reach new customers may be waiting a while longer yet.

Geosocial, or geolocation, services — which allow their users to send short messages online or by text to update friends on their whereabouts and activities (also called “check-ins”) — are as far from becoming mainstream as MySpace is likely to enjoy a sudden resurgence in popularity, according to a report from Portland-based digital marketing agency White Horse Productions. To put it bluntly, most consumers don’t see the relevance, and businesses are still not doing anything about it.

White Horse interviewed 437 U.S. smartphone users, discovering that while 56 percent are aware of geosocial apps, only 39 percent use them. And most non-users said they know nothing about these apps or know very little. Adding insult to injury, a small number of users admitted they stopped using location-based apps at a certain point for a number of reasons.

What is it that is keeping non-users from jumping aboard the geosocial services bandwagon? The White Horse survey showed that a third of non-users had privacy concerns, and nearly as many said they saw no need, interest or benefit in geosocial apps. Nineteen percent said…

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