Considering Instagram revealed this week that it's working on a “friend map” feature, it was interesting and timely to come across a startup during Mobile World Congress that plans to go even further than that. Swayy is her iPhone app startup that allows you to share your information. the current location, but your Next appointment location. It could be hours, weeks, or even months away.
So why on earth would anyone want to do that?
The advantage, as founder Dene Westrop told me, is that “you don't have to constantly coordinate with friends via text or phone calls, and the app allows you to let your followers know where you are.” . Next You will then be able to determine whether they can “coincidentally live in the same place” as you. ”
You can also publish your future location to curated groups. It can be a girlfriend or two in your family, a specific group of friends, a group of work colleagues, or the general public, or anyone using the app (Swayy does not have a public user). (a web version that is accessible to the entire Internet).
Again, I asked, why bother? These days, people coordinate via text messages and shared calendars. So what does it mean?
“Swayy enables more spontaneous outings and creates serendipitous encounters,” argued Westrop, who previously worked in dating startups. “You have complete control over who can see your future location.”
“Suppose I want people to know that I'm going to Barcelona for Mobile World Congress. I publish it to Swayy, specify which part of the city I'm primarily in, and my friends You will passively know that someone is in the city. It would be much more fun and exciting to have the possibility of more “happy coincidences” happening. “That might bring more spontaneity to your life,” she said. He added that for now, the app is focused on getting users on board before building out any business models, such as advertising meeting places.
A shaking post. Image credits: mike butcher
Whether you think so or not, it's clear that this app has a chicken-and-egg problem. Without more users, you won't be able to create the spontaneity that's promised. I managed to convince a few friends to join the app, but they were all in London, so my efforts to create a chance encounter in Barcelona were pretty limited.
That being said, if I could get more friends into it and get some kind of critical mass, and they did as well, then maybe by sharing where we all go next, Can we get more chance encounters? The app generates a kind of newsfeed of where your friends will be in the future, rather than where they are now. This is much more useful if you want to reroute to a friend's general location and get some “usually difficult” information. -To plan random drinks. ”
In other words, Swayy is the perfect app for people in big cities with a certain number of users who don't mind bumping into each other often for work or play. Knowing where your friends are right now isn't very helpful, because Instagram is bound to find out. Because wherever they are, they usually have to stay there long enough for me to have time to get to them, or vice versa. There is also no obvious “invitation to participate.” With Swayy, you can clearly tell others if you want them to be in the same place as you.
I also like that you can create custom groups in the Swayy app. This avoids privacy issues. The ability to expose your next location to, say, 1 or 2 users, maybe 5, or maybe 10 (or more) users can be super private or super public. Much better than doing.
As Westrop noted, the female founder is keenly aware that having control over exactly who can see her future location is something built into the app. .
Additionally, when a user publishes a Sway, others in the network can “join” it (if they can “see” the post), creating a group of all people “Swaying” to that location. I explained that I could set up a chat. Westrop. Users are also prompted to confirm that they are actually on their way to their intended location.
Of course, Swayy will likely struggle against big tech companies that are already toying with location as a feature. As we found out this week, Instagram's friend map is more or less a copy of Snapchat's popular feature and the “Find My” feature on Apple devices. It would also be an opportunity for Instagram to appeal to people who were fans of Zenly, the social mapping app that Snap acquired but shut down in 2022.
However, according to screenshots posted so far, Instagram's friend map only appears in the “Close Friends” list or is not visible to anyone. It's a very dull on or off switch.
Swayy's ability to create a much more selective list of users may be its most useful and privacy-protecting feature.
