Augmented Reality Dating For The iPhone
As part of my talk, I was giving an overview of the opportunities and how companies can include augmented reality functionality in their existing solutions. One of the examples I gave was around online dating. Specifically, if you are single, wouldn’t it be great to be able to see who around you right now is single? After I had finished a company came up to me and in true ‘there’s an app for that’ fashion told me about their augmented reality dating application.
Street Spark is an augmented reality dating application for the iPhone that allows you to see other single people who are around you and send them private messages. The designers have actually put a lot of thought into the application and augmented reality actually feels useful rather than a bolt on. In fact, the designers have played down the augmented reality functionality all together so it doesn’t show up in the app store when searching for augmented reality.
To avoid being spammed by psychos and bunny boilers, if you spot someone you like you can express your interest by ‘igniting’. If they reciprocate by igniting you back then you’ll be able to view their full profile and chat. If you don’t get on then you can simply ‘extinguish’ the spark and they can’t bother you again. Since you are more likely to get a spark if you have completed a good profile and uploaded a decent picture the format should work well.
Rather than attempt to match you with people 50 miles away, you are able to sign into HotSpots, so if you visit let’s say London Soho you can sign in to the area and see who else is using the application around you, and that’s where the augmented reality view comes into effect. Holding up the phone enters SparkView which shows you where your matches are located, how far away they are, your compatibility match rating as well the all-important profile picture. When they gave me a demo I was impressed, it’s well worth taking a look as the weekend is coming up.
StreetSpark is free and you can download it here.
Give it a try this weekend, I would be interested in how you got on.
