WorkLearnMobile - The Mobile Learning Innovation Network

Social Local Mobile (SoLoMo) is a buzzword gaining rapid popularity in mobile retail and marketing – but is it any use for learning?

Actually, it is.

SoLoMo is a useful reminder that the most effective mobile apps combine three different aspects:

• Social (community / people / peers);
• Location (context / awareness of where you are);
• Mobility (your learning with you).

Marketing people like the buzzword as a reminder to focus on all three dimensions when developing apps for enterprise and promotion but there is no reason not to adopt the same themes when thinking about learning.

SoLoMo has emerged out of the growth in GPS-enabled devices, and the exponential growth in accessing the internet, especially social networks from a mobile device (you can see a simple illustration on the SDRS blog). Localized services allow consumers to search for just-in-time results, and it changes the way marketers need to think about communicating with their consumers. Instead of having information pushed at them, consumers are “pulling” the information they are interested in. For companies, this means having their marketing strategies completely joined up across all platforms. Developers have found that both apps and hybrid apps have more tools at their disposal for determining accurate local results, making mobile devices more powerful than computers.

The best examples of mobile learning are already SoLoMo, whether they realized it at the time or not. Social learning that understand where you are, what you need, and can help you while on the move.

If you’d like to learn more about how “social” can impact learning, see Chapter Three from the Social Learning Handbook or accenture’s Business Case for Social Learning.