Digital Hide and Seek

Brightkite is taking a different tack—it wants to help strangers meet one another. Brady Becker, Brightkite's founder, says it's all about "creating serendipitous encounters." But Becker doesn't want to leave such encounters to chance alone, "We can actually determine if you and another user are going to the same concerts or other places, and we can say, 'You might want to meet [each other]'." That potentially makes the service appealing to an entirely different type of person, one who isn't afraid of using technology as a catalyst for semi-random social encounters.

But what's appealing to some may feel a little creepy to others. Most services are very sensitive to the privacy concerns their software raises (although anyone with serious qualms ought to be sure to read the fine print). All the services NEWSWEEK tried require users to press an "update status" button to reveal themselves, meaning your location won't be given away unless you expressly ask it to be. Some, like Loopt, allow users to limit which of their friends can see any given location update. Loopt also makes clear that it won't record users' comings and goings or past information that can identify them on to unwanted marketers or anyone outside their own self-selected social circle.

There are, of course, other things to be concerned about. Several services try to foster love connections—Dodgeball, for instance, allows users to list up to five crushes and will alert you when they're nearby, but though the feature has led to several real-life relationships, what happens when a couple calls it quits? "There's no consequence to saying, 'Yes, Ex-Girlfriend, I want you to be my Facebook friend'," says Crowley. "But when you do that same thing on Dodgeball, or any of these mobile social services, you're potentially broadcasting your location to [your exes]. Whenever you build software, you have tech bugs; we used to call this [one] the 'ex-girlfriend bug.'"

As technologically advanced as they are, these services aren't foolproof. Douglas, the San Franciscan who spent weeks avoiding a pair of annoying friends through the power of Dodgeball, eventually hit a snafu. "One evening they didn't check in soon enough," he wrote. "These people were obsessive Dodgeballers and had checked in from a hair salon an hour earlier. I walked into my favorite Indian place, saw them, and only then felt my phone buzz [with their location update]. But then I had no choice but to sit through dinner with them."

© 2008