Liz Gannes

Recent Posts by Liz Gannes

IAC’s Crowded Room App Will Help You Meet People (And Maybe Date Them)

In many ways, a new local social app called Crowded Room feels and functions like Foursquare. But instead of being about finding new places, it’s about finding new people.

Crowded Room — which was developed inside of the mega-Internet conglomerate IAC and is available for iPhone, Android and HTML5 — fits into the category of social discovery apps. It helps users find people to befriend and date, based on the venues they check in at and plan to go to.

Crowded Room users — who are generally shown with a profile picture, first name and age — get a personalized list of suggested people and recommended venues based on their history and interests.

Users can indicate their future plans with a “might go” button, which is intended to build critical mass around meeting up at a certain spot. (Other apps — like Ditto, which hasn’t really taken off — have tried similar ideas of future check-ins.)

Crowded Room users can also “shortlist” each other, which is kind of like privately indicating you have a crush on someone. If two users both put each other on their shortlists, they get a notification.

In related news, I recently wrote about Proust, a social journaling service also out of IAC.

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