not Android or BlackBerry devices.
Rather than hunt through random new faces at an event to find worthwhile new contacts, Martin believes one-year-old Sonar can help users home in on the types of professionals they are searching for. “If you are going to meet 20 people, why not make it the 20 people that you should be connected with?” he asks.
Martin says a race is on to bring social contact data from the Web to mobile in ways that have real-world use. “There’s a gold rush of people building applications to help navigate that data in a physical context,” he says. However, Martin had no comment on specific rivals such as Pearescope. “I have too much of my own stuff to worry about,” he says.
Much like Sonar, Pearescope also promises to introduce its users to new acquaintances with whom they share mutual contacts. Schrader left the neuroscience doctoral program at Vanderbilt University to found Schrader Labs, later renamed Pearescope, in 2009. “Schrader Labs was going to umbrella into other verticals in this space,” he says. Schrader relocated from Nashville to New York in June.
Schrader says Pearescope included LinkedIn information in a beta version of its app, but the forthcoming release will rely on Facebook data at first. He says LinkedIn information will be added at a later date.
Others startups such as Hashable and Addieu, both in New York, offer their own apps for organizing contacts, but the users must make their own introductions. Neither Addieu nor Hashable search the area around their users for new contacts, however the apps do include information to show the relevance of each social connection.
Addieu, for example, lets users track their own Foursquare check-ins that relate to where and when each contact was met. Hashable similarly keeps a record of such information via Foursquare check-ins.
Apps for making introductions between professionals can be found at some business conferences, but so far are rare in general usage. Qrious in New York, for example lets users create profiles to share contact information with other folks at events. The company wants to take its app out of the convention hall and into the streets, as well.
In spite of any perceived similarities to Sonar, Schrader says Pearescope will not use Foursquare check-ins that he says raise questions about privacy. “The check-in model allows everyone to see where you are,” he says. “There really is no filter.”
That concern, however, may have to do with Foursquare users not policing their own information. Martin says Sonar only takes publicly available profile details from sources such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. “We’re not showing anything that anyone isn’t already broadcasting on the Web,” he says.
