P3-System Designs: A classification of systems that connect People-To-People-To-Geographical-Places

Any-time any-where communications systems today go beyond providing people-to-people links to providing geographic place based information. While such systems that link People-to-People-to-geographical-Places (P3-Systems) have burgeoned over the last decade or so, their functional similarities and design approaches have not been systematically examined and classified. This paper helps address this gap in the literature by first recognizing P3-Systems as a distinct class of applications, and then providing a conceptual framework that distinguishes between four basic design-approaches. These are : 1) People Centric P3-System design that uses absolute user location, based on awareness of where somebody is located; (2) People Centric P3-System design based on user co-location / proximity; (3) Place Centric P3-System design base on the use of virtual spaces that contain representations of user’ use of physical spaces; and (4) Place Centric P3-System design based on the use of virtual spaces that contain online interactions related to physical location.