Groovr Revamped, Obligatory iPhone Interface
Groovr, the twitter-meets-mobile-social-network-ish website I looked at in January, has been overhauled with what I think is a more fitting site design and grokkable information architecture. True to social networks, Groovr lets you upload photos and videos, maintain a profile, have friends in addition to the concept of Shout Outs (think twitters/pownces) and a Groovr-specific feature, Check-ins.
Groovr initially started out as a primarily mobile web application where users interacted with Groovr via texting on their cell phone. Check-ins is an extension of its mobile nature, letting you notify friends and groupies of your current whereabouts. Locations have their own pages where related photos, videos, comments, shout outs and check-ins are aggregated. And it wouldn’t be 2007 without a rockin’ iPhone interface.
Groovr’s iPhone interface includes unique features such as one-click Check-ins thanks to “some nice GPS workarounds with IP geocoding” and the ability to call friends within your Circle of Trust, a “granularity mechanism that fixes the 100,000 friends problem”.
One of Groovr’s more interesting features to be slowly unrolled lets you share a photo or video on your mobile device. Friends that receive your notification updates will automatically be shown your shared picture/video directly on their mobile device.
There’s no doubt that some of you will glaze over this post and think “just another social network”. For the others, what are your thoughts? For me it is all dependent upon whether my circle of friends use the same service. At the moment many more of my friends are on Twitter and Facebook than any other social network (if you can even call Twitter a social network, rather just a web app with social features) so I am somewhat put off to Groovr, even though it has a ton of potential.
Don’t forget to check out Groovr on your iPhone.
Disclosure: Earle Ady, Groovr founder and co-founding CTO of HotJobs.com, and I go way back and he has helped me with my sloppy coding in the past.
The redeeming factor to Facebook these days is the ability to aggregate content from other, more daily-use, sites (such as del.icio.us and twitter) via FB Apps.
Managing all these new independent social networks is next to impossible. Generally I sign up for every new thing just to check it out, basically from a business perspective. However, I do appreciate it when sites give me the opportunity to connect the services I do use to my profile and basically create something that’s relatively interesting for my friends to look at — for those friends that do use that particular service.
Therefore, even though I don’t really use Facebook (or Virb, for example) much at all, my less tech-friendly friends that use it daily can still get regularly updated content from me via Digg, Del.icio.us, Last.fm, Flickr, etc.
Yeah.. looks quite good, Paul. I might have to give that one a go. You were right though, I did skim through it but went back and read in detail after you mentioned it! Hmm.. now the only problem I face is getting all my friends to switch from.. here it comes.. Bebo!! I mean, who uses that anymore?! I feel like I’m surrounded by people who don’t appreciate and love technology.. and they wonder why I spend soo much time on my laptop..
IP Geocoding? That’s incredible LAME. Why don’t they build an app for real phones with REAL GPS?
As Senor lolrus says, iPhone can’t has GPS. =/ And it wouldn’t be an iPhone interface if it was on say, a Blackberry 8800. Now iPhone 2nd G, that’s another story..
Hi. IP Geocoding, may be “LAME”, but it really depends on what you’re using it for.
If you’re looking to perform precise military grade calculations based on IP Geocoding, you of course, will be faced with a very “LAME” situation.
However, if you’re looking to find popular locations within a general geographic area, you’ll be surprised to the effectiveness (read: NOT SO LAME) of a solid IP Geocoding database! These are readily available for purchase through popular providers and work awfully well! I may not need to know the ten foot radius where you’re standing to provide you real-time updates of event information in your neighborhood which may interest you.
And yes, the rest of our sites work for phones “WITH REAL GPS”.
Excellent attempt at a flame nonetheless!
Best,
e.
Argh another social network :-) It looks pretty cool, but this whole market is blurring and becoming boring in my opnion. For anyone to rise to the top and stay there they are going to have to continually be creative.
Another social network? well this looks quite interesting though and I just got an Iphone so ill probably check it out.
Since we are on the cell phone topic, please can anyone help me out? I have been looking for a solution to creating a website that can accept/do an action via text, such as editing your account or status in facebook or twitter via your mobile. What do i need to lookup, sms gateway? or servers? my problem is that I do not know what exactly i should look for in order to create this kind of interface any form of assistance or advice will be great help.
I agree, they need to have something that makes them stand out a little more than the current offering. Some neat features, but nothing to make a hardcore Facebook or other user switch. It’s like anything else out there. I could get my cell plan a little bit cheaper from someone else, but is it worth trading out my phone, switching contracts, etc.
When I went on a canoe camping trip a couple years ago, the composting toilet we brought was called “the groover”. No idea where that came from, but it seems appropriate now.
What I love about Groovr is how easy to use Iphone app is, before me and all my friends were using myspace to keep in touch, which we all know how well of a networking site they are….or aren’t. Basically if you want to use a networking site for people you actually talk to in the real world Groovr is a great way to stay connected. Plus its nice not to have 10 friend requests a day from random webcam robot girls. What is up with that anway…
Best,
Jared