What Gets Lost With Friend-Finding Apps
Posted by meredith on 02-27-2009
A few years back, when Boost Mobile was still a youth lifestyle brand, the Sprint subsidiary made a prescient move by teaming up with the Gen Y company Loopt to release the first-ever social mapping service. It was a very targeted campaign aimed at urban youth, that’s probably best remembered for the ingenious tagline, “Where You At?”
Flash forward to 2009 and the question of where friends are still remains on the forefront of young minds, and by extension the minds of most mobile companies. And while Boost has since decided to move on and focus on “value” versus youth (read run screaming in the opposite direction from the iPhone), Loopt has kept on promoting its mobile social software, gaining major headway last year after joining forces with the iPhone App store. In fact, as of last November, TechCrunch reported that Loopt’s app was ranked by Apple as the 20th most popular free application, and was being downloaded more often than both Facebook and MySpace’s applications. However, with the recent arrival of Google’s Latitude that may all change. Once the app is available to iPhone users, the allure of simply importing preexisting contacts users versus building new networks (which has already caused trouble for Loopt) may very well give Google a killer edge over small developers. In other words, the social mobile network may be on the brink of becoming a mainstream phenomenon.
One concern I have is the questionable premise driving all these applications in the first place — that text-fluent teens and twentysomething somehow need an easier way to locate their friends. Secondly and more pressing, I just find something inherently invasive about knowing where a person is before they choose to tell you. Not to mention potentially awkward. I imagine this would especially become an issue for teens in high school who are already overly concerned with being left out.
Now before I hear it from commenters, I do realize that a plethora of privacy controls and advanced settings have been put into place to avoid just these types of situations. That’s fine. If you want to consider what level of security each of your friends deserve or whether or not particular outings should be black opts. Okay, obviously I’m exaggerating here, but the point is.. doesn’t this all seem like too much work for a feature that’s meant to be fun?
Why not take advantage of the positive potential of these services — directing friends to where you are, selecting a place to meet that’s convenient for both of you, etc. — without inviting the type of miscommunication and subtext messages that come with the current all-access nature? Perhaps if Google and company added one extra step that came before the actual tracking, the latter could be avoided. Maybe users could receive a request from friends who want to view their location? In other words, a way to ask “Where You At?” before you know the answer. What do you think?
For more coverage of the latest trends and developments in mobile technology for youth, check out the Ypulse Mobile Channel.
Categorized under: Mobile