Listen To Places Through People With Chicago Startup: EvzDrop INTERVIEW

Chicago startup Evzdrop has put a new spin on social discovery. Rather than going somewhere and seeing who’s around you, you can “listen” to places using Evzdrop’s website and mobile app.  Essentially what Evzdrop is doing is combining event discovery with people discovery, in reverse.

To understand this better here’s how it works. When a user goes somewhere they do a drop, basically putting a pin down where they are at. “Dropping” is Evzdrop speak for checking in. Once  you check in or “drop” you can leave a tip or comment about the place. Through your setting you can decide if you want to share your “drops” with people in your network or the public at large. Or, if you rather just lurk in the shadows you can go into “stealth mode” kind of like those startups that think they have original ideas.

You can update your drops as well. For instance if you go to your favorite burger joint and they’re out of milkshakes, that may be important information people need to know. Or perhaps you’ve gone out to one of your favorite clubs but tonight it’s a pure sausage fest.

These drops make event and people discovery for other users a breeze. Now people can look at all the places they want to check out. Users can search for a place or see what’s trending. When they do that, they’ll see all the drops from the people there already. They’ll know if it’s hot or not, by just looking at the drops on the mobile app.

Evzdrop,Chicago startup,startup,startups,startup interview,social discoveryIf you’re the “dropper” your drops can be voted up and get you points by the more people that check out your drop. Evzdrop calls this whole thing listening in. So now you’re listening into places rather than just checking them out.

To put it another way. FourSquare is great for checking in you want to check in and get points, and show all your friends that you’ve checked in to such and such place. You may even want to be the mayor (do they even do that anymore). With Evzdrop they’re giving the drops a real purpose. When’s the last time you went to FourSquare to see if a place was hot? You looked for the people right? Evzdrop puts that idea in reverse.

We got a chance to talk with the Evzdrop team. Check out the interview below:

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London Startup: GreenLight, Not Just Another Social Discovery App INTERVIEW

GreenLight,London Startup, Paul Carr, TechCrunch,PandoDailyEveryone could use more friends right? Well now that finding friends has turned to social networks and everyone wants to be the match.com for friends, social discovery has become a common household phrase (at least in startup circles).

Most social discovery platforms use your social graph to determine who you need to meet. For instance, before being acquired by Facebook, Glancee would use your likes and interests on Facebook to match you with likeminded people close by. We quickly realized how faulty this process was.

Case in point, I signed up for Glancee, and used it at SXSW. Now for whatever reason, when Mark Zuckerberg got a new puppy named Beast, I liked him on Facebook. Shortly after that when I attended SXSW this year I was matched up with 30 people who also liked Mark Zuckerberg’s puppy. Maybe we should have started a fan club and had a drinking party or something but really that raw data algorithm is flawed.

Gaz Evans, one of the co-founders of GreenLight, tells us that their social discovery platform is better. They actually ask personality driven questions about each user in order to match them up with other users. They also tap the users social graph so some of their likes are built in, but overall this may be a good alternative to other social discovery platforms.

We got a chance to interview Evans and the team from GreenLight, check the interview out below. You better read it quick though, before the next social discovery platform comes along.

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We Talk With Sonar CEO Brett Martin One Year Later, Meet The Here Now Network.

Last year at TechCrunch Disrupt NYC we were out in full force to support Ocean City Maryland native Brett Martin. I city I practically grew up in and lived in for nearly 8 years of my formative years. Aside from that Sonar was the first of true social discovery apps and it was very cool then, and even cooler now after todays announcements.

We were totally stoked when Martin and the Sonar team made it to the finals where they came in as a runner up to high end peer to peer car rental startup, Get Around.

We wanted to know what it was like for the last year for the Sonar team. They didn’t win the cup last year but it seems that being a finalist was just as good.

They tripled their office size from 3-9 and they’ve added a whole new suite of features. They also launched an Android beta, which Martin assures me will be released to the public shortly.

Wednesday at TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2012 it was all about the Here Now Network. Back in March on a phone call with Martin I expressed some worry over the initial Sonar concept. It was fresh and new in May 2011 but by March 2012 there were apps like Highlight, Banjo and Glancee in the space. Martin kept telling me that they were working on things on their back end that he couldn’t talk about but they would blow me away.

Those things Martin showed off today at Disrupt, the Here Now Network, move Sonar far ahead of the competition again.

Sure there are plenty of apps that do discovery and proximity based discovery but Sonar and the Here Now Network are all about your own personal network of people who are here now. Your closest friends, business associates and family members who are in your immediate area are what matters most.

Martin describes some great use cases in the video below. For example when he steps off the subway on his way into work he checks in. He leaves a status “Just got off the subway, headed to Starbucks does anyone want anything”. That message is broadcast to the Sonar team (his coworkers) as soon as he passes by the office door just down the street from Starbucks.  Now he can pick up coffee and bagels for everyone without picking up his phone any more than just checking in and looking at the order.

Another example he gives is that his team likes to go out to an outdoor food court sometimes. They all get different items from different vendors and if one of them finds a table they just check in and say “I found a spot in the shade, southeast corner”. The message is broadcast to his teammates.

There are endless things you can do with that feature.

Check out our talk with Brett Martin on the new features, life for the past year and where he and Sonar are going. We recently saw social discovery exit Glancee take an early exit to Facebook. Martin tells us he’s in it for the long haul.

L.A. Startup: Hereon.biz Discover Business Professionals Around You INTERVIEW

The past year has been a big one for discovery apps. We all know about the hype surrounding Highlight, Glancee, and countless other social discovery apps at south by southwest this year. Discovery apps are great for discovering people around you.

Most of the discovery apps are using Facebook and Foursquare as their backbone. This is great for finding people with like minded interests or in the same place but sometimes you want more out of a discovery app. Take conventions for instance. Big conventions like South By Southwest and CES have hundreds of thousands of people around. With everyone checking in somewhere or another it can be kind of noisy.

Hereon.biz solves the noise problem for people that are looking to meet people in their same profession or field. In most cases you’re paying hundreds if not thousands of dollars to participate in a work or professional conference. You don’t need to meet the barista from Starbucks that happens to be a block away jamming with friends.

Hereon.biz uses LinkedIn API’s to connect people in like minded professions. Ultimately events like conferences and conventions or being in major hubs on business are the ideal place where Hereon.biz really comes in handy, but you may be surprised at the people that are around you at home, in your same profession.

I know that when I signed up for Google+ and discovered the nearby feature it showed a lot more Google+ users in my hometown than I thought. However, after perusing their streams and profiles most of them really didn’t have much in common with me, outside the fact that they used Google+.

More after the break
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Chicago Startup: iFindit Takes On Real Social Discovery

We’ve heard about hundreds of social discovery apps. You’re familiar with the type, punch in your account info for Foursquare, Twitter or Facebook and find people near you. That’s what we are used to when it comes to “social discovery”. Well there’s a relatively new startup out of Chicago that helps users connect with real their real “social” environment.

We’re not talking about finding new people who share the same interests as you. We’re talking about things like food, shelter and medical care.

Here’s how the founders of iFindit describe themselves on their web page:

The application aims to assist social workers, case managers, providers and residents.  iFindit was built to serve Chicagoans by providing quick information regarding access to food, shelter and medical care in their area.

More after the break
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