I’ve been in the field of location-based services since 2003. At Cellfind we launched one of the first cellphone tracking services in the world, and since then I’ve been lucky enough to see the location datasets at a telco (iBurst) and a social network (Mxit).
Conclusion: Location is the single most useful piece of data for determining the background of a person. Race, income, age, religion, you name it, location is the answer.
Where you live says more about you than the colour of your skin.
So when you’re asking yourself what is the most useful information about your target market, repeat after me:
“Location location location”