

Glancee: A Nice-Guy Ambient Social Location App For Normal People - andreavaccari
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/09/glanceelocationapp/

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rudiger
I swear I'm not a Luddite, but I just don't see the advantage of these apps
versus going out and meeting new people, no matter whether it's at a coffee
shop, on the street, in a park, at a conference or at a bar. Investing your
time in a few five minute conversations has got to be a better way to meet
interesting new people than broadcasting your interests in a 100-yard radius
and having an algorithm match you to people who happen to agree with your
choice of keywords (and have to be using the same app.)

Can someone explain the appeal of these "ambient location" apps?

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yid
Well, no single size fits all, and it's easy to dismiss any app if it doesn't
hold a personal appeal. However, it's often more difficult to strike up a
conversation with a random stranger than if it were enabled with some sort of
context. In other words, the pretty girl in the coffee shop might have no
interest in talking to me normally, but if we somehow found out that (1) we
were both interested in making new friends, and (2) we were both into
Dostoyevsky and Phish, then hey -- serendipity enabled!

Of course, the first thing I'd talk about is what a silly way to meet,
cellphones and the Internet and such, but hey---it got the job done.

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pork
Good point, but I think they want to go well beyond pretty girls in coffee
shops. I like that they use your Facebook likes behind the scenes to generate
connections that might be serendipitous.

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pork
I agree, I tried it out and it was remarkably accurate.

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rmah
I don't understand this desire to only meet people who are similar to
yourself. I want to meet people who are interested in, have done and are
passionate about _different_ things than me. I don't know about you, but
talking about the same old thing again and again is boring to me.

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pork
This part stood out to me:

> The app compares your Likes in common with Wikipedia listings to identify
> similar categorical interests. Examples I’ve seen: If the other person likes
> The New Yorker, a line of text might say “You like The Econoimst.” If they
> like The Sopranos, it says “You like Mad men.” Sometimes these comparisons
> end up better than others, but overall the feature does succeed in showing
> you things loosely in common that might not have been obvious if you only
> compare Likes.

Any chance of making this an API sometime soon?

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andreavaccari
This is something a few people asked for. What would you like to use it for?
Besides matching people to people, you can match people to products (if
properly tagged). Do you see other uses for something like this?

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popisdead
great works guy, keep high the name of italian startup scene!

