TechCrunch wrote us up, usage surged

Will There Be A (Successful) iPhone-Only Social Network?

Michael Arrington

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iPhone owners, like users of most Apple products, are a fairly passionate, elitist group of people.I think an iPhone-only social network, if it had the right features, would be a huge hit with these users. Actually, I think any mobile social network would be a big hit, if it had presence awareness and was able to tell you both where your friends are and what they are up to. And also let you meet new people around you who were open to it.I wrote about some of the early experiments with mobile social networks last September (see our more recent coverage of LimeJuice as well). The big social networks, of course, aren’t ignoring mobile, either. But even Facebook’s iPhone app is just the desktop version optimized for that phone. It doesn’t leverage the device itself to tell you when friends are close.The goal here isn’t just to let users see where their friends are and what they are up to. The killer app is to facilitate meeting new people – either for dating (see a picture of everyone around you who’s single and looking, along with their basic bio), or business (see the professional bio and picture of everyone at the cocktail party). Subject to privacy controls, of course.Once a network has critical mass users will, depending on privacy settings, be able to walk into any gathering and see information on the people in the room. Whoever gets there first will have a far more valuable asset than the existing networks at MySpace and Facebook today. Social networks are about being social. And social implies being around other people. The device they have with them when they’re doing that, and which can enhance those social gatherings, is their mobile phone. The key to doing that is through GPS or cell phone triangulation (which the iPhone now has).None of the mobile social networks we’ve covered have even come close to establishing a critical mass. The key to winning is getting users on devices that have GPS or triangulation for presence and location, and having software on the phone instead of just accessing it from a website. Getting java apps on phones in Europe is much easier than in the U.S., which is why most of the mobile social network startups are located there.The iPhone, though, has both. Or rather, soon will have both (the SDK to allow third party apps on the phone may have been delayed). As soon as that SDK is released, look for a flurry of third party applications to try and create a social network on the iPhone.The front runners will be Facebook and MySpace, who, I assume, will get their users to install software on the phone as quickly as possible and try to add location information for users who choose to share it.But new startups will try as well. And one way to differentiate themselves may be to offer a social network that is open only to iPhone users, and no one else. The exclusivity factor may be exactly what will draw enough iPhone users to kick start the service.Fon11 – Giving It A ShotBerkeley-based Fon11 is one startup that we’re tracking that plans to do this. The service works already through the web browser on the iPhone. In fact, you have to use it from an iPhone – it’s the only way you can register for an account, add friends or do anything else. The website, when accessed from any where but an iPhone, just shows information about the service (note – that isn’t entirely true – you can go to testiphone.com and enter fon11.com/home and see it just like it would appear on the iPhone – but only from the Safari browser).The service is fairly limited right now to setting presence/status information. They can’t use the iPhone triangulation feature, so they set up a separate service called OpenLandmark to let people set their location information (it works well for places you visit frequently). The service caught the eye of the iPhone team, who made it a Staff Pick earlier this month.Blackberry has a true GPS and allows third party apps on their phone. And Google’s Android will also do all of this as well. But something tells me that iPhone users might be the first group of people to jump on mobile social networks, and wouldn’t mind letting other iPhone users in the room know they’re part of the cult.

 

Seeding landmarks by people who will socialize there

Ed Arnold made a comment on one of our older blog posts about the seeding of landmarks that I want to share with everyone.

“Why not allow users to seed the landmarks? We could do this using our own iPhones and then we can seed the landmarks that are important to us. This makes more sense, esp. for people who will socialize in the same area.”

Yes, Ed, this is our goal. Users generate landmarks; users keep them interesting with nice photos and up-to-date information (microblogs and articles) – like a urban revitalization concept. We then create cool apps to discover and socialize around the landmarks.

Right now, you can post landmarks at http://www.openlandmark.com/post (use the same sign-in account info as Fon11). Currently, you can only post one landmark at a time. So it’s a little painstaking. In about a week or so, we will have other posting mechanisms that will speed up the creation of landmarks. It will take advantage of geo-tagged photos.Also, at the moment we are intentionally restricting the metros to only a few places to demonstrate our concept. We originally tried opening all metros around the world, but people were getting lost setting empty countries and metros. We will re-gen our system with metros in every nation around the world. Please give us a week or so.

Regarding posting landmarks from the iPhone: we need the SDK. Even with that, I am not sure whether we can use Skyhook’s WiFi/Cell Tower locations for landmarks. It might not be precise enough to use as a landmark for navigation. We prefer to use a GPS data logger, such as the one from Holux. We will soon provide a form to upload a bunch of photos to our server and bookmark them as landmarks quickly.

Known Problems: Sign-Up Form & Set My Location

Michael Arrington wrote us up on TechCrunch today. We are going to get a lot of hits. I better inform the new users of known problems and about our next refresh.

First, the [Previous] and [Next] keys on the Sign-Up page do not work because of our JavaScript. Instead touch to move to a field. Then, use the back <x] key to delete the field-name before entering data.

Second, you can only change your location to another landmark inside the SF Bay Area with the “I’M HERE” feature in OpenLandmark. Unfortunately, there are very few landmarks in OpenLandmark yet. We apologize for the inconvenience.

We are working on a new refresh (target March 3). It will include bug fixes and internationalization (French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Chinese and Malay) for Fon11. Other languages will follow soon. Contacts will be sorted by availability and most recent. Nearby will include time zones so you know when not to call.

OpenLandmark will include new posting pages to speed up the seeding of landmarks. This will allow us to enable more metropolitans around the world.

Thank you for using our products.

Sharing Information on Fon11: Under Your Control

One of the advantages of using Fon11 is that you can share information with your friends and contacts while exercising full control over what level of sharing you engage in.

For example, only those people you have chosen to add as contacts can see your presence message, mood, and availability. You control how closely they can see your location – and if you want, you can hide your location completely. In addition, your contacts will not necessarily be able to see all of your phone numbers. They see only those numbers that you have specifically given to them and that they have input into their contact listing for you. As a result, automatic number updates only go to those contacts who already have the relevant phone numbers in their contact lists.

Fon11 takes your privacy concerns very seriously and will protect your phone numbers and other personally-identifiable information contained in your account. We do not keep track of which contacts you have called. For further details, please read our Privacy Policy.

Bug Fixes

We fixed a couple of bugs today.  One caused a bookmarked link to freeze in the “Sign in to continue” error page, after a session has timed out.  The second affects the input filter that was applied to the message page.

Tip: See What Your Friends See

Add yourself as a contact to see yourself listed in the Contacts and Nearby pages. This way you can see what your friends see.

How Does My Location’s “I’m Here” Work?

I’m Here is a feature in OpenLandmark, a companion site for Fon11.

This feature allows you to set your current geolocation (represented by latitude and longitude) at the landmark. This is the only way to set your current location on an iPhone and iPod Touch.  We are waiting for Apple to announce the SDK, which we hope will allow Web apps to access the Skyhook WiFi/Cell tower geolocation information in Version 1.3.

OpenLandmark is also a work in progress. Although we already have the ability to support many metropolitans around the world and to create new metropolitans rapidly, it’s a daunting task to create landmarks all around the world at once. It’s going to take time. We have started seeding landmarks in Berkeley and Las Vegas. We also have a user-generated landmark bookmark and shoot-and-upload solutions, which we are working to implement quickly.  We hope this will speed up the creation of landmarks, thus making Landmarks a feature you can use around the world.

iPod Touch enabled, but phone features are not supported

The iPod Touch can now access Fon11. Please note that only non-phone features are supported. Clicking on a contact, for instance, will result in an error on the iPod Touch.

Fon11 on iPod Touch, PC Safari and as Mac Widget

Fon11 alpha was launched with iPhone support only. We did so to limit the number of users hitting our site while we continue to improve existing features and incorporate your feedback. Thanks for your interest in Fon11 on iPod Touch. We will open that tomorrow morning.

PC Safari and Fon11 Mac Widget will come soon. Please follow www.twitter.com/fon11 to get the latest updates.

Introducing Fon11 “A Live Phonebook”

Think about the last time you changed your mobile phone.  How long did it take you to re-key your contact list? How did you inform your friends and contacts that you had a new work, home or mobile number?  Now, all you need is Fon11 and you can simply update your phone number in your settings.  Fon11 will take care of the rest and update your contacts’ phonebooks.

We aim to make the phonebook alive. Share your availability, what you are doing, your mood, and your location with your contacts via the phonebook. Locate your friends and landmarks nearby.

Our team has worked long and hard and we’re excited to roll out Fon11. This is just the beginning. Fon11 is a work in progress, and we intend to add a lot of other cool features. For example, the API release is coming very soon, which we hope will attract other developers to create versions of Fon11 for other mobile devices.

We hope you enjoy using Fon11. If you have ideas, or find bugs in Fon11, we hope you’ll take a moment to send us feedback.