Up Next: iGroups, Apple’s Social Location App

Nicole Martinelli ()

Up Next: iGroups, Apple’s Social Location App

Apple has devs to the grindstone for a new social networking app called iGroups.

Patently Apple reports that docs out today from the US Patent Office describe a new service that would work on your iPhone and probably MobileMe, too.

Let’s say you’re attending SXSW: iGroups would keep you in touch with your co-workers and friends by allowing you to share your location plus info and comment on events as they happen, greatly facilitating which parties or events are worth attending or already over.

To accomplish this, iGroups reportedly employs a sophisticated cryptographic key generation system to ensure security and privacy.

The patent also states that if one of group devices lacks true positioning technology, Apple’s MobileMe service would provide “virtual GPS” capability to that user so they can still know the whereabouts of other group members.

Would you welcome a geo-location social networking app from Apple, or prefer to stick to Gowalla or Foursquare?

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Via Patently Apple, The Next Web

5 comments »

About the author

nicole_martinelli

Nicole Martinelli is a San Francisco native who has lived in Milan and Florence, Italy. She's written for Wired.com, The New York Times and Newsweek. You can find her on Twitter , Facebook and Google+.

If you're doing something new/cool that's Apple related, email her about it.

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Posted in iPhone, iPhone Apps, iPod Touch, News |

  • Charli

    sounds like a revival of the old dotmac groups facebook style

    i might check it out but I’m not sure I’d play. I’ve already got facebook and twitter. now if the three could run off one program, that would be a plus

  • http://web.me.com/giosaccone GioSaccone

    It’s a cool idea!

  • Boone

    i like the idea but integration with other social networks would make it much more appealing. A lot of my friends do not have an iPhone, thus rendering the app basically useless. If there was some integration with texting or email it could be pretty nice.

  • Gazoobee

    This seems a very typical situation to me. Opensource’s response to geolocation is simply to provide a switch to turn it on or off, and let the users worry about the specific implementation themselves. Google’s great implementation idea, is to use your address book or friends list to chose.

    Apple on the other hand, figures out what the most useful or popular implementations are, does a flawless, original, implementation of those, running on the iPhone OS, and then patents it. Seems brilliant to me.

    Anyone could have done this beforehand, but they didn’t. This is just Apple out-thinking and out-innovating the competition IMO.

  • http://crowdbeacon.com/how-works.aspx Rachel Patterson

    Truthfully, the Apple check-in/comment app sounds way cooler. Foursquare is fun and all but I want more from it. The checking in for badges and points just seems to be redundant. I really dig the utility and social aspect of the iGroups. I think the sweet spot for these types of apps need a combination of community and utility. I work for Crowdbeacon and it is one of the more utility based apps.