Most of the hype you see around location-based social networking is about the serendipity of meeting your friends when they’re out and about or how it will be used for location-based advertising. The new Apple iPhone and Android app Unsocial isn’t concerned with those things, as it is using LBS to help professionals connect.
The Unsocial iPhone and Android app are available today for people in the Bay Area and it has been described as Foursquare meets LinkedIn. That means you’ll be able to set up your “brand” and broadcast what you’re looking for.
This could help you find the people who are important to your business, or people who could potentially be important to your business. On its blog, the company said the Apple and Android apps will have:
– iPhone *and* Android available now (Blackberry & HTML 5 coming soon)
– Unsocial is launching one city at a time, starting with the SF Bay Area – more cities following in the coming weeks
– App uses Geo-location to show when other users you might want to meet are nearby
– Discovery and search based on user profile, smart tags and search terms
– Integrates with LinkedIn for simple login, helping you find people you don’t already know
– Integrated messaging between users to set up meetings or keep in touch
– Includes a discovery engine for events taking place nearby, according to geographic distance
– Offers branding and visibility to others via digital billboard and self-describing tags
– Ideal as a conference application: includes “Live” features to distribute agenda, schedules, events, meetups, Twitter feeds, RSS feeds, etc.
It’s too early to tell whether this company is on to something but it’s clear that LBS is coming in a big way. I ultimately think that Facebook Places will win in the social location space, but this is going to be a huge market with room for plenty of niches.