I feel the same way, but I get the impression that "kids these days" love that kind of thing, so the fact that you or I wouldn't use this isn't necessarily a bar to success.

That's the crux of the problems I see with this. I can believe it's a very good implementation of Skype, but the genuine novelties (location broadcast and record-by-default) are the first thing any remotely privacy conscious person is going to turn off most of the time.

Is a setting that [unless turned off] tells people what form of transport I'm using really better at avoiding unwanted intrusions than a status update? Am I going to be more or much less likely to leave it on in the background in case any of my friends choose to come and socialise with me if everything is being recorded in the background?

I can certainly imagine edge cases where those capabilities would come in useful, but it sounds like they're more likely to generate negative hype and corporate bans than encourage adoption.