Introductions Using Sonar

Sonar is a new geosocial mobile service, which came out of K2 Labs, a mobile incubator, that helps users connect to others based on where they have checked-in and who they might know in common. Currently built on Foursquare, you are able to see others at a chosen location, listed based on the amount of mutual connections you might have. 

Similar in the manner that Hachi allows you to see if you’re connected to someone based on your degrees of separation on LinkedIn and Facebook, Sonar pulls in mutual friends from your Facebook and Twitter network who are only 2 degrees away (friend of a friend) and allows you to send them a request to connect. 

When interested in connecting, you can send a tweet which mentions the user and the location where you both are. The issue is that if the recipient isn’t checking their Twitter feed constantly, they might miss the request, and by the time they do check, either party might have already left the venue. Implementing this feature as a push notification would greatly increase the chance of creating the introduction. One of the points that Sonar’s CEO, Brett Martin, stressed was that the app is completely usable even without users. Because user information and location is being pulled from public data, you’ll always be able to see results, as long as others are publicly checking-in on Foursquare. The push notification issue could be a nice piece of functionality of both users have the app installed. 

I think it’s definitely an awesome service, and can’t wait to see what else they have in store as they continue to grow and improve the product. Check it out in the App Store [link].