As summer draws to a close, stats have been on my mind. Today’s insight, from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, analyzes American adults’ use of mobile and social location-based services. Here’s what we found notable:

1) The title of the article, “28% Use Mobile And Social Location-Based Services,” (we’re going to call it MoSoLBS) is somewhat misleading. The overwhelming majority of this traffic is due to people looking to get recommendations based on their current location (23% of adults). Other common LBS uses, such as check-ins and social media have a much smaller impact.

What to notice: First is that it’s clear that we’re not at full scale adoption for the complex location services such check ins or automatic social media targeting. I think this begs the question of whether or not these types of services will ever capture mainstream attention from smartphone users. We’ll be keeping an close on this and will keep you updated about any developments.

Second is that smartphone users differ from feature phone counterparts in that they engage more often with location-based services. As smartphone penetration increases, this will certainly have an impact on the market as a whole.

Third, according to the report, location services are very popular among Hispanics (25% use check ins and 31% use social media tagging). As we’ve seen, Hispanic marketing requires a specific strategy to be successful.

2) The study also analyzes reasons why people decide to whip out their smartphones:

What to notice: First is that SMS is king for smartphone users, with 92% accessing this feature on their phone.

Second is check ins and video calling have yet to occupy significant mindshare for smartphone users. These features, though a big advertising vehicle, are important only for a small minority.

Third is the difference between social networking (59%) and Twitter (12%). Though a lot of people seem to rope these two applications into the same sentence, this seems like an oversight as the usage rates differ significantly.