Highlight (for iPhone)

A new mobile app, called Highlight for iPhone (free), taps into two of the hottest trends in technology: geolocation and social networking. The app is carrying out an interesting little experiment in trying to help people make new friends by using your iPhone's GPS to find people who are both physically nearby and similar to you. If you're familiar with the iPhone app called Color (free) it's a little bit similar, only without the emphasis on photos.

Highlight gained some attention at this year's South by Southwest (SXSW), a huge festival that takes place every year in Austin, Texas. SXSW is known for its free-spirited and easy-going nature. People flock to the city to be social?listen to live music, watch new films, go to parties, and learn about trends in the interactive technology space. That particular time and place was ripe for an experimental app like Highlight, but will it work for you in your real life?

The Highlight Concept
The concept of the iPhone app Highlight is to introduce you to new people. You need GPS enabled to use the app, and you have to connect the app to Facebook. No Facebook, no Highlight. The reason Highlight uses Facebook is to leverage your interests, social network of friends, and other information, rather than asking you to input it anew.

I prefer apps that let you connect to Facebook optionally, but don't require it, as Pinterest does. The information I share on Facebook isn't necessarily the same information that I want to publicly share in other application and services. I always want an option to create a new profile that's not bound to another profile of myself online.

When you launch the app, it looks for other people who are nearby and are also logged into Highlight. If you share mutual friends on Facebook, the app tells you whom. If you share mutual interests, you'll find that out as well.

You can write a short blurb about yourself that other Highlight users can see, perhaps telling them more about your interests or what you're doing right now.

Highlight in Real Life
I logged into the app and found a few people also trying out Highlight nearby. For each person, I could see a name, profile picture, location on a small map, and a short blurb if the person wrote one. I found one person, Eric, with whom I shared a mutual friend. He and I exchanged a few short messages, along the lines of, "What do you think of Highlight?" It felt non-threatening because we did have that one friend in common (a business acquaintance of mine; I don't know how Eric knows him). However, if a stranger were to message me through Highlight without us sharing a mutual friend, I think I'd find it creepy and might even worry about my safety.

The app may have made for an interesting game at SXSW, where people are actively socializing, networking, and trying to make friends with strangers, but back home in the very large and very crowded city where I live, I don't want to meet new people all that often. Highlight could be fun at big social events, like festivals, music concerts, or even on college campuses, but it's not for me on an ordinary day.

Lights Out
Highlight feels more experimental than useful or enticing, because it plays with geolocation and social networking without meeting a real need or desire among users. I think it's an interesting concept, but it's too much about what we can do with geolocation and social networking capabilities rather than what should do.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/A_qxHkmgTBc/0,2817,2401658,00.asp

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