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.