Take all the simplicity and randomness of posting stuff you have or want to Craigslistand add some only-for-mobile features like filters based on proximity, 140 character limits on descriptions, and quick chat to check availability or coordinate for meeting up… and that’s pretty much Anttenna.

From my short experience with the app there is still a fair amount of work to be done to make the service a heck of a lot more user friendly…  like the somewhat unfriendly “Supply Chain” and “Demand Chain” terminology used to describe whether it something I have or something I want. The main page of listings defaults to stuff available nearby, and the list is full of the randomness you might expect with things ranging from a downright spamish offer for $200 rebate on blinds or a queens air conditioner installation company offering… and just a ton of nearby real estate listings with super short descriptions of apartments available for rent.

There is of course a way to filter just what you’re looking for by a variety of factors such as location and category by using the you guessed it ‘filter’ button. Categories include a long list ranging from straightforward things like books and furniture to less straightforward thingslike “items for rent”, “real time dating” and ‘rouse-around” (whatever the heck that may be).  But I think they’ll need to design the discovery process a bit better so it doesn’t take seven clicks to drill down into a category.

In theory the application makes perfect sense… connect the nearby people who want stuff with the nearby people that have stuff, keeping it simple for the mobile device experience yet keeping the power of filters, and added tools such as maps and communications to help improve the process.

Now comes the tricky part of how you take something that makes all the sense in the world in theory and get people to get the app, and post the availabilities of their rouse arounds en mass. 

Many of the things happening in the LBS space right now have a foundation in something that was successful on the web, with a mobile and location aware reinvention of a proven formula. That seems to be the case here with Anttenna as the mobile LBS equivalent of Craigslist, and we’ve seen it before particularly with efforts to re invent the social networking experience in a similar light via players like Loopt and Brightkite and many others. Ultimately I wonder how successful these can ever be.  As new and exciting as mobile location aware services on smart phones are, the total number of folks available to use the services is well below that of the web when services like Craigslist began to flourish online, which gives many of the web leaders in their space ample time to play catch up.

So anyone that’s been around the online advertising world will be familiar with the famous Google Page Rank algorithm. While maybe no one other than Larry and Sergey truly knows how it works, there are literally small armies of SEM and SEO experts that wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat wondering if they left out an important keyword, or whether they need to pay for links to get a boost for their clients.  It’s a fascinating micro economy that has developed almost exclusively around servicing customers and their interaction with Internet search providers, particularly Google and its $20B in annual revenue.

I haven’t bought search in well over a decade, before Google existed, and am by no means an expert in search, let alone local search, but if you’re looking for more information I’d suggest starting out by reading SEOmoz or Greg Sterlings Skreenwerk blog or reaching out to a local search SEO specialist like David Mihm or Mike Blumenthal who are frequent speakers on those circuits and regularly share some invaluable experiences on their blogs at Mihmorandum and Blumentahals.

But to greatly over simplify, fundamentally there are two main components in play for Google on the web, and how well they translate into a true mobile location aware search is fuzzy at best.  So for the current Google web search here are two key factors being looked at:

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