Neer Takes the “Suck” out of Social Geo-Location Apps

January 6, 2011 By

Facebook Places, Gowalla, Foursquare, Britekite, and all of the other social geo-location services suck! Why do they suck? Because they don’t automatically keep track of my location, and because they’re designed to tell everyone where I am.

My dream geo-location app is one that runs in the background and frequently updates my location. It’s also an app that’s crazy about my desire for privacy. It appears that my dream has come true with the debut of Neer for the iPhone 4.

Connect with your Inner Circle

Neer doesn’t try to connect you with all of the assholes you’ve friended on Facebook. Instead, it looks for people they think are related to you – your parents, spouse, siblings, and kids. It then makes it super easy to add them to your Inner Circle.

Neer Inner Circle

Neer makes it easy to set up common locations, like your home and work.

Neer My Places

It then provides alerts letting you know where your connections are.

Neer Alerts

Another nice, simple feature is its ability to tap on a contact, and then call or text them.

Neer Call or Text

There are a few more features I would like to see that would make this the perfect geo-location app. The main one is the ability to notify me when I’m in close proximity to a friend. For example, if I was passing by a coffee shop, and my friend was there, I’d like for Neer to push a message to me, alerting me to their presence. Then I could decide if I wanted to stop by and say hi.

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My Ideal Mobile Social App for iPhone

March 14, 2010 By

I’ve tried every social app for the iPhone (at least the ones with a fighting chance.) I’ve even given some of them multiple chances, because I really wanted them to succeed–Brightkite (iTunes) being one of them. Right now the shining star is Foursquare (iTunes), but I’ve already lost interest in that one too.

I think part of the problem is me. I’m not that social. That’s not to say I don’t have any friends or never go out. It just means I’m in my mid-thirties, I have kids, and I don’t get out that much. If I were a teenager, or single and in my twenties, then mobile social apps might be more appealing to me.

The Perfect Mobile Social App

There’s one huge problem with social apps that affect everyone. You have to manually update them.

Even old anti-social guys like me would use social apps on their mobile devices if we didn’t have to manually update our presence. So with that being said, I probably won’t use a social app again until it can solve the problem of manual updates.

For me, the perfect social app would automatically update my presence to a central server every five minutes or so. The same would be true of my friends. That’s it. That’s what I want, and what’s missing from all of the social apps out there.

There’s a beauty to auto-updates. The main thing is that I don’t have do anything to let others know where I am. But there’s also other advantages. They include:

  1. Automatically pushing a notification to me and my friend if we’re in close proximity to each other
  2. Automatically pushing a notification to me if there’s a person in close proximity to me that I want to avoid
  3. Automatically publishing my location publicly for places I’ve designated

Badges are cute, but I want my lazy problems taken care of first. Once that’s solved, I’ll be back.

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