Social Geo Dating: StreetSpark

I've heard of smartphone dating applications that alert its users if they happen to be in close proximity to one another but StreetSpark's unique approach to geo dating lies not only in its geolocation platform, but in its social matching capabilites. It draws on your social behavior on social networks like Facebook to match you to other users. If a match is found to be in close proximity, you can either "ignite" or "extinguish" the spark to get meet up information. Drawing on one's social graph is a great idea. No more 400 "scientifically" designed questionairs or proprietary matching services.

One concern comes to mind with an application like StreetSpark. By making your services a smartphone-based platform, you really close the market for your product. There are only a certain number of people in any given area, but by filtering those results with people who have a smartphone (iPhone specifically) AND are using your application can greatly reduce user inventory. Nonetheless, the idea of using the social graph to find matches is a great idea. I think StreetSpark would do better focusing on a web based platform with geo-dating as a supplemental feature.

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On Mashable

Week 13 Overview: The Social Strip

Just this las week the APOC class had the pleasure of hearing two local online community heroes, Alf Lamont (Director of Marketing and Development for the Comedy Store) and Majorie Kase (Co-founder of MarKyr Media), discuss how "The Social Strip" came to be what it is today. Here are some key points I gleaned from their discussion:

The New Rules of Marketing and PR - Meerman is Dearman for Beginners

David Meerman Scott’s book, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR” is a good beginner’s “how to” guide to navigating through the digital media marketing and public relations arena. In his book, Scott describes how the Web has essentially fused marketing and public relations roles into one. With emerging media tools made available on the Web, not only can a marketer or Public Relations person more effectively and efficiently reach its buyers, but can now do it on a much smaller budget.