The State of Location-Based Social Networking On The iPhone

The Categorizer - Limbo

Limbo is provided by a company that seems to have undergone quite a few transformations over the years. We reviewed the company in May 2006 when it was a bizarre auction service based on text messaging. Back then it was located at 41414.com and you can still see that ancestry in the current logo (just look at the reflection).

The app is, at its heart, more focused on locating strangers and learning about what they're doing than any of the aforementioned apps. All users are categorized by four types: Members, Contacts, Friends, and Faves. You can opt to share your location with each or all of them, with "Members" being everyone you don't know, "Contacts" being people pulled in from your phone's address book, "Friends" being people more important to you, and "Faves" being the most important people to you.

Users are further categorized based on their current "activity" (or status). They are either socializing, eating, playing, chilling, working, feeling, or enjoying a bit of "me time". You can view users by their particular categories on a "What" page that displays the categories in a grid.

Limbo neither shows you your friends' locations on a map nor gives you their exact locations (just their general regions, e.g. San Francisco). Both would make this app a lot more useful.

The Wall - Zintin

Zintin has gone even further in the direction of helping you communicate with strangers nearby, rather than helping you find your preexisting friends. Users in the vicinity are displayed in all-inclusive list along with their current status messages. When you select a particular user's name, it takes you to their Wall, where short notes, photos, and scribbles can be posted by any user.

The Wall is the central, and pretty much only important, feature provided by Zintin (so-called "bulletin boards" are also provided but they're essentially Walls for particular regions). If you find someone with particularly cool stuff on their Wall, you can request to exchange your contact information and meet them. But most people will just use the app to see what kind of juvenile stuff others around them have decided to share. If you've turned on the "allow mature content" setting, then that content is primarily explicit material, so be warned.

Zintin, which has been in development by a few Stanford CS grad students since late 2007, is mostly a curiosity at this point. However, the scribble feature, with which you can make quick doodles and post them for others, should make its way into other apps.

The Elephants In The Room - Facebook and MySpace

Neither of the big American social networks have added location-aware services yet, but they're coming. Expect them to eclipse several if not all of these services after learning from them.

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