A number of sites, including Techcrunch and MocoNews, picked up on a blog post from the Times of London about the Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (Sniff).
The Social Network Integrated Friend Finder (Sniff) is a new application, accessed via Facebook or mobile phone, which could bring an end to frantic “Where r u?” text messages.
The service, popular in Scandinavia, promises to provide users with a detailed map of their friends’ locations, any time and anywhere. However, there are fears that Sniff could be abused by employers to remove the last vestiges of privacy from staff.
Useful Networks, the American company behind Sniff, promised that only consumers who gave their permission could be electronically tracked by the service, which operates across all mobile carriers. Users can specify who can and can not sniff them, or whether they are open to be sniffed by anyone on the network. The company plans to charge users about 75p for each location “sniff”, with the results for mobile customers sent by return text. It will be the first Facebook application to apply premium charges to customers’ mobile bills. The heaviest users in Sweden are wireless-connected members of the social networking site, who have integrated the application into their personal profile page.
Apparently, commenters are indicating that this was an April Fools joke (”Dianne, took this off The Times did you…today was it? Dear oh dear.”). But really, it’s unclear. The company Useful Networks has a site, complete with a decidedly uncorporate (but awesome) tagline, “Taking the BS out of LBS.” Yes, it could have been set up on the fly. However, if the app is a “joke,” it’s so close to possible that it isn’t that funny (we’re not talking about colonizing Mars or anything). This service isn’t very different from a number that are already out there that use either GPS or triangulation, including uLocate, MapMyTracks, Loopt (on Boost, soon on Verizon) and Buddy Beacon (which launched on Helio in 2006 and will soon be on Sprint, Boost, Alltell and Metro PCS). Also, the “Friend Finder” service in Malaysia does just this as well. And as the Asia Scout Network reported, that IS being used by women to keep tabs on their husbands. The only new element was the Facebook piece, but its really no huge stretch that LBS services will one day (soon) create facebook apps. Everyone else is.
If this is indeed an April Fools gag, the real joke is on the people who thought this was so far-fetched, it was hilarious. As Michael Arrington said in the comments on Techcrunch’s post “if this is a fake, its elaborate as hell, and seems to be more effort than payoff.” Indeed, location-based services like this will be powering our mobile lifestyle in the coming years. Ha ha….?
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