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On Thursday morning of this week I will be interviewing Gary Vaynerchuk, social media maven and host of the wildly popular Wine Library TV video podcast. You may remember we mentioned Gary a while back when reviewing his book Crush It!: Why Now Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion, a bestselling book on how to use social media to boost your personal brand.

The hyperlocal news site Fwix launched a revamp to its service yesterday, allowing readers on its website to customize and socialize their news feed. Fwix users can follow local and hyperlocal topics, as well as follow other readers who share their interests. Taking advantage of Facebook's recently released Open Graph API, Fwix now allows likes, comments and sharing of news stories. Noting that Facebook currently doesn't "do location," Fwix founder and CEO Darian Shirazi said that the updates to Fwix allow them to connect local data to the social graph, creating an ecosystem of real-time local and hyperlocal news.

During a graduate school entrepreneurship class, my classmates and I were challenged to come up with an idea for a mash-up or venture without describing it as "a website for (fill in the blank)." What I believe our professors were trying to teach us was that when forming an idea, you shouldn't anchor yourself to a specific platform. These platforms are never in a state of rest, and right now there is a large shift occurring from traditional computing to mobile computing. As the mobile platform continues to increase its usage share, entrepreneurs should be keeping the opportunities provided by mobile at the forefront of their minds.

For a long time, technology has been touted as a force that can help us connect globally. But the urge to stay connected locally remains. And the same technological innovations that have facilitated global commerce and communication now seem to be turned towards helping us (re)connect to our neighborhoods, communities and local businesses. As buzz around location-based networks and services grows, "the local" is poised to be a place that's increasingly the emphasis for innovation and entrepreneurship.

The popular location-based services Foursquare and Gowalla were launched at the 2009 SXSW, and one year later, many proclaimed the 2010 SXSW to be the year of "location, location, location". With almost 350,000 Foursquare check-ins during one day of the event, and with numerous location-based services launching before, during, and after SXSW, the buzz among early adopters surrounding location-based social networking seems to show no signs of abating.

This week geo-crazy mavens were pleased to hear of location-based updates to Facebook, the launch of Foursquare analytics and of course yesterday's news of Gowalla's comment and picture functionality.

So far the most common way to monetize these types of services is through sponsored leader boards and tips on nearby promotions. But the question remains, can local ads really sustain the entire location-based ecosystem?