Since we had a thread this morning talking about sceptics on HN ( <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629583" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1629583</a> ), I have to say that I'm not a big fan of this idea.<p>As it turns out, multiple people in the same location can already talk to each other. In fact, that's how it usually happens.<p>One of the problems I see with this is critical mass, will you get enough users on it to be useful? Note that most other location related services (say yelp, foursquare) don't require a critical mass of people to be at the same spot at the same time.<p>Conferences would certainly have enough people that some might wander in to your track's channel, but would it be used enough day to day for people to naturally open it up when they have an extra minute?
I've been thinking about this type of app a lot and i think it's a great idea and it won't be the last of these type of platforms. My prediction is there will be hundreds of micro chat sites in the next few years and there will be thousands of 'foursquares' similar to the way there are many, many "social networks" that aren't threatened by facebook.<p>1. Chat apps will appear for major cities that may or may not feed into a larger community. For instance, why doesn't someone launch 100 of these apps - Miami South Beach, Atlantic City, Vegas Strip, etc. I click it, i'm chatting with people I know are in Vegas and doing the same things... drinking and losing money, of course.<p>2. Reward systems will develop that are much more elaborate than a free beer for mayor. Pseudo-panzi-schemes with downlines, etc but tied to real financial rewards, to incentivize people to chat. For instance, you give people a share of ad revenue in proportion to how early they sign up in an area and how often they're online. Or prizes, or points that they can spend... Like groupon on top of chat?<p>3. Normal people will start to think of location based chat. Hashtags are a poor tech geek's way of filtering by location... if i'm tweeting to friends at a conference i wish i could <i>prevent</i> my friends who aren't there from receiving those messages. I know they don't care and don't want to be irritated at our elaborate tweeting about where to meet for the best Thai food in north america (which happens to be in Vegas, by the way). <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/lotus-of-siam-las-vegas" rel="nofollow">http://www.yelp.com/biz/lotus-of-siam-las-vegas</a>
Here's a great analysis of why Meetro (Doing similar thing) failed:<p><a href="http://meetro.lefora.com/2008/05/21/meetro-post-mortem/" rel="nofollow">http://meetro.lefora.com/2008/05/21/meetro-post-mortem/</a>
I love this app idea. I think we've only scratched the surface on extending the natural social experience with technology.<p>There are many more to follow in this vein.