One of the key features within Sysomos’ technology is geo-demographics: the ability to determine where social media conversations are happening and who’s leading them. For companies that want to understand what’s going on, having information about where (locations) and who (age/gender) is extremely valuable.

Geo-demographics has been a core part of what Sysomos offers clients around the world, and there’s no doubt that location will be a major theme in 2010. In fact, location could be the biggest trend within social media in 2010.

There are two major factors driving the “location” market: One is technology that will make it easier for social media services to integrate the location of a user into the overall experience, and two, the emergence of real-time search that will leverage location by quickly showing where social media users are located.

Twitter’s embrace of a geo-location API, and its purchase of MixerLabs and its GeoAPI technology yesterday is just the tip of the location iceberg. Like the real estate business, the Web is now about location, location, location.

For businesses, location is important for a few reasons. Perhaps the biggest is it gives them intelligence about where people are located and what they’re doing. For example, if you’re shopping downtown, and tweet about looking for a place to have coffee, Starbucks can now hit you with a special offer at a store two minutes away.

This ability to deliver the right message at the right time to the right person is a powerful combination, which is why businesses will be all over location, and why companies such as Google and Twitter are all over it.

For more thoughts about the “location land rush”, check out TechCrunch.