Similar technology to Google Latitude has been developed years ago, including in my Human Interface course at University of Michigan in 2006. Obviously, the combined power of Google's applications and breadth of Google's platform has finally delivered this to mass-appeal. Combined with Twitter's universally generated and distributed status updates (through RSS, SMS, Email, Web Messaging, and easily others in the future), people and their activities will inevitably become more objectified as conduits to leisure, success, entertainment, romance, and so on in an increasingly categorized, segmented, and niche world. These technologies not only allow people to interact with the Web in new ways but experience (and arguably understand) more about the world and accomplish more based on our strengths and connections.
I don't think this is necessarily wrong (or right). I think it's an amazing social evolution in which people can choose to participate. Everyone knows the old adage "you are what you eat." That may be personally significant, but most people don't care about you as much as you do yourself. Others care more about "you are what you do and can do" and "who and what you know." These technologies enable them to figure that out. I would liken this social trajectory to Reality-TVing or Videogaming our lives...without the excessive eyeliner and lip gloss of Bret Michaels, press-on appendages and accessories of Tiffany "New York" Pollard, or low-grade resolution of pong.
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