Right Here. Right Now. The need for proximity based p2p matching
Right Here. Right Now.
Consider the following scenarios.
1. You are riding the subway. You are getting bored and notice this gorgeous person sitting a few seats away from you. You are hesitant to start a conversation (ipod plugged in). Wudnt it be cool that you get a notice on your cellphone if the person matches your ideal date parameters.
2. You are a conference and are hoping to find some people interested in the area of mobile gaming. Wudnt it be cool that you can set a lookup request on a website/cellphone which would then send you a beep if a match was found within your proximity.
3. You are looking to buy a TV or sell a car. And it may happen that the person sitting next to you in a restaurant or bar is the one looking for that car you want to get rid off.
4. You want to hire the best web programmer and you are completely oblivious that the guy who you see at the local bookstore every sunday is a born hacker.
In our daily lives, we go on looking for someone or something, without realizing that sometimes they are right there, beside us. As they say, “first look in your backyard, before seeking out in the world.”
Gist: Right here, Right now is a technology solution that allow people to connect with one another based on common interests and physical proximity in a manner that doesnt violate the privacy of a user and one that is not overwhelming with irrelevant match notifications.
Differentiation: At this time i was thinking this, there seemed to be no real solutions out there. However, in recent years and with the launch of the 3-g iphone, such location based applications may already be in the pipeline.
Solution:
1. A website where a user creates a profile and specifies their cell phone number
2. Allows users to create several people lookup profiles. For example, create a profile for your ideal date, a profile for finding someone for a job, meeting someone for business, etc.
3. Track users location through the GPS coordinates in their phones. Or alternatively provide a bluetooth application that detects neighboring cellphones and beams the userids of the users to the server where a compatibility match is performed
4. If a match occurs (both users profiles match on atleast X% of criteria) ,then users get an alert to send a text for to initiate communication .
2 comments June 23rd, 2008