Sarah Dobbs looks into Google's latest foray into social apps
Trying to make plans with almost anyone seems like an exercise in frustration nowadays. We're all getting busier and busier, to the point where you need to give several weeks' notice just to arrange to grab a pint after work with your best friend. If you find yourself with a couple of hours free one evening, finding someone to spend it with seems like a Herculean task, even if you and all your friends live in the same town. There must be a better way, right?
Well, Google might have the answer. In a not-much-trumpeted move, the tech giant has dropped a new app into both the Play store and the App Store. Called Who's Down, it's currently in closed beta, meaning you have to apply for an invitation to join. Clearly my invitation has been lost in the post, but let's not let that stop us from poking at it to find out more...
Who's Down?
From the screencaps on the app page, Who's Down looks to be a pretty simple interface. You add your friends, and then when you fancy hanging out, you slide the toggle button to show that you're 'down' (i.e. available). You can add tags to suggest activities or scroll through your list of friends to see who else is up for a trip to the cinema/fancies going for tacos/wants to go for a quick drink.
There's a messaging service built in too, so you can make solid plans with whoever you want to see. It's tidy, straightforward, and potentially pretty useful. If you try to get access to the app at the moment, it asks you what school you go to, so it seems like Google's aiming this squarely at students; that makes sense, since that's probably the time in most people's lives when they have the highest number of local friends and large chunks of free time. Like Facebook, though, there's no reason it couldn't be opened up to everyone after its initial launch.
Will It Catch On?
Trying to predict an app's future before it's even been made available to more than a handful of people is obviously tricky. But although Google has a long and storied history of launching and then shutting down unloved social apps, this one seems like it might be a goer.
Unlike Wave or Plus, it's not trying to muscle in on a market that's already been well served by other services; friend groups might use Facebook or maybe WhatsApp groups to post similar 'I'm bored, anyone wanna do something?' type messages, but there isn't another app geared to that specific function, so Who's Down might well capture it.
And unlike Buzz or Latitude, it doesn't have any glaringly obvious privacy concerns. It doesn't ask users to post their location to the web, and it doesn't push users into oversharing their info; all it asks, really, is for a toggle to be pushed from a 'no' to a 'yes' position.
If you squint, you can see how there might be some potential for awkwardness there: if you've felt obliged to add your entire social circle to the app, for example, you might struggle to find an excuse not to socialise with someone you don't really like if you've already indicated to the world at large that you're 'down' to hang out, but maybe there'll be filters for dodging people you're not really available to? (Or maybe, like when a Twitter 'glitch' unfollows people, we'll all just make up excuses that blame the technology.)
I'm definitely down for trying it out, Google, whenever you're ready.
Google's Unfortunate History Of Social Apps
Google doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to launching social apps people actually want to use. Here are the ones that came before:
Orkut (2004 - 2014)
Named after Google engineer Orkut Buyukkokten, Orkut was a MySpace-style social networking site with the USP that it let users rate one another for various personality traits (like 'cool' and 'trustworthy'). Although it wasn't particularly big over here, Orkut was massive in India and Brazil. Google pulled the plug last year, having decided it would rather focus on YouTube, Blogger and Google+ instead.
Google Lively (2008 - 2008)
Google's take on Second Life, Lively, never even made it out of beta before getting shut down. Created by Niniane Wang, it was a kind of system of 3D virtual rooms, in which up to 20 users could chat. The idea was that Lively rooms would be embedded in websites, so visitors could get a sense of what the site's community was like, but within four and a half months, Google had decided it wasn't working out.
Google Wave (2009 - 2010)
Wave wasn't exactly a social networking site, but it was close. It was a messaging platform, where messages ('blips') were stored on a central server rather than on a user's device, and where people could be added to or removed from conversations at any time. Google reckoned it could replace email, but the rest of the world didn't agree. Wave still sort of survives, as a project by the Apache Software Foundation, but Google's given up on it.
Google Latitude (2009 - 2013)
After acquiring and shutting down location-based social service Dodgeball, Google launched Latitude, a kind of social add-on to Google Maps. The idea was that users would broadcast their location using their smartphones and be able to see on a map where their nearest friends were. Although it was opt-in, and Google promised it wasn't keeping a record of where users were, it just didn't seem to appeal to many people.
Google Buzz (2010 - 2011)
A kind of microblogging/aggregating service, Buzz was supposed to be integrated with various other services, including Flickr, YouTube, Google Reader and Twitter. Criticised from almost the moment it launched for its lackadaisical approach to privacy, Buzz was another shortlived venture.
Google Plus (2011 - present)
Google's answer to Facebook, Google+ is still around, but it seems to have failed to take off. Although it has a massive user base - because if you've got a Google account, you're constantly being encouraged to sign in! - analysis has shown that only 6.7 million users have more than 50 posts on Google+, which suggests most people give up pretty quickly.