In letting privacy concerns dissuade them from leveraging the iPhone's geo-location feature, MySpace and Facebook are making a big mistake. - Inspired by Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

Although Facebook and MySpace have both launched iPhone applications that are useful for heavy users, "they won’t drive new users to the services because they failed to leverage the killer iPhone feature - location awareness," states TechCrunch's Arrington. "Social networks today rely on friends of friends or real world connections to drive growth. But a handful of iPhone-only social networks actually help drive new connections in the real world. And the backbone of those applications is location awareness."

Due to all the hype about sexual predators, MySpace and Facebook have both had to really tighten their privacy policies. Adding a feature by which users can see the profiles of other users near them raises all sorts of concerns, which he says is why they haven't done so already.

Although Facebook and MySpace have indicated that, at some point, they will roll out applications that make use of the location feature, Arrington warns of the dangers of waiting too long as one of the early networks could develop a substantial lead.