First Look: A totally Unsocial app

Sometimes it seems like the last thing we need is another social networking app, but how about being Unsocial?

Unsocial (free) is a new iPhone app described as the unholy spawn of LinkedIn and Foursquare. In other words, it's oriented towards business networking, like LinkedIn, and location-specific networking, like Foursquare. The new app and service came out this morning, and according to the developers, it's focused more on the people you don't currently know, but should.

The launch today is a beta, and it's currently only available to folks in the San Francisco Bay Area. The eventual idea is that when you're at conferences or just wandering around a city business center, you can have Unsocial search for people nearby who you might want to connect with -- people who meet certain search criteria based on smart tags and user profiles. For example, when I'm at Macworld Expo 2011 in San Francisco in a few months, I might only want to meet with Mac developers who meet a specific criteria. I'll set up Unsocial, which then alerts me when those people are nearby, and I can use built-in messaging to say "Hi" and specify a place to meet.

Conferences can also supply Unsocial with agenda information, speaker profiles, and official twitter feeds, making the app much more useful to conference-goers who use the app. Unsocial is an interesting concept, and one that I look forward to trying out.

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