6th Sense is a San Francisco based company running a Beta MoSoSo application and I’ve been following them for some time.
You download the free application to your phone, which kind of turns you into a web page discoverable by Bluetooth for others to see and find out what you want to tell them. This enables better networking for business, social or sexual reasons.
One of the problems with this type of service is establishing any kind of critical mass. After all, the chances of me downloading the application and being within 10 metres of someone else with the same app at the same time is billions to one against. It’s the time factor that often gets overlooked and really stacks up the odds.
So, the critical question is where you start deploying your software. It has to be in a tight geographic area and preferably peopled by geeky folk, who will almost certainly be the early-adopters of this kind of service.
Sixth Sense have answered this admirably with this weekend’s forthcoming promotion. Firstly, focus on Silicon Valley, which must have more geeks per square metre than anywhere else on earth - but do they let ever let them out of their cubicles? Then focus even tighter on the flagship Apple stores in the area, whose techno porn products are a magnet for the geek species. Mix in some cheeky hijacking of tech celebs and you have a pretty powerful cocktail to score some converts.
The idea is to launch a game, playable on the Sixth Sense application. You download the app to your phone and head down to an Apple store and start scanning for other users. You score 50 points for finding ordinary folk, 100 points for some faux celebs (Jobs, Yang, Lucas etc) and a grand total of 300 points for mobile uber blogger and my near-namesake, Russell Beattie.
Winners get Nanos, with some runners-up prizes. The question is, will the Sixth Sense team still be around to hand out the prizes or will they get buried under lawyers’ letters from some of the famously touchy celebs (Russell excepted, obviously).
I think the value of bluetooth based social networking has very limited value. while it sounds cool, very few people go to the malls or shops by themselves, they go with friends or significant other. They don’t want to be seen as desperate for dates.
Let’s say you go to an apple store, you are going to go with a buddy or girlfriend, do you want to be getting sixth sense app messages. It is just not the type of thing you want others to know about.
And the reality is no body wants to meet a total stranger in Malls and workplaces. It works on the internet, because you can chat with them first online and then meet them if you feel comfortable.
On a different note, I am working with a friend of mine to develop a mobile phone based dynamic carpooling service and hope to update you soon. Please keep up your good work, I very much enjoy reading your blogs.
Cheers.
AY
Not to mention that Nokia already has a competing application (Series 60 only, though)
http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,1522,,00.html?orig=/sensor
Hi - thanks for the comments as always.
AY - I take your point, but I also think we should be wary of making generalisations, as they’re all wrong, including this one.
In other words, we might not want them, but I’m pretty sure that there will be kids who think this kind of thing is cool.
Love to hear about the carpooling idea when you’re ready.
Alex - yeah, we covered Nokia’s Sensor back in June http://mobhappy.typepad.com/russell_buckleys_mobhappy/2005/06/nokia_sensor_of.html
Has anyone tried any of these apps in the wild?
Russell
Great post Russell! You perfectly described what we are trying to do.
AY - Sure, some people may not see the value, but we have to be forward looking, and well, even Nokia felt this was interesting enough of an area to look into. =)
Alex - We tried to address some of the differences between us and nokia sensor in a blog post
Cheers,
Mike, my skepticism is more about bluetooth based social networking as a concept and not with six sense. I hope you guys really succeed, because only if one of these services catches fire will people start taking the mobile services seriously. So, my best wishes to the six sense team.
Regards
AY
Looking at the mobile dating scene, it’s still lagging behind online dating services. In the past there were some attempts to offer location-based dating services. If a potential date was in the user’s range a text message would notify both parties.
This service wasn’t very successful because people found it very intrusive. People don’t want to get a notice of a potential match within range every time they take a walk in the street. Moreover, people don’t want to be aware that the potential match has got the same notification and might be looking for them at the same time.
i think many of these bt-based social apps are focusing on connecting strangers randomly. this one described here adds a nice marketing flair. but, i think a quite obvious way of using these apps is at a conference (i think there’s something out there already). it would also be made better with some web integration and being cross-platform.
lots of thoughts there…