Using Bleam’s Twitter Integration for Conferences and Concerts

Over the last week, many tech and phone related blogs have posted about Apple’s new technology patent called “iGroups”.  We are glad Apple likes the idea of location-based social networking with Bluetooth because that’s what Bleam does. We actually take some pride in this development, in that it validates what Bleam is all about and shows how Apple, a true innovator, is on a parallel course.

To quote from Patently Apple’s post:

“During private or public events (e.g., concert, tradeshows, business meetings, weddings, rallies), a typical individual may have many brief contacts with individuals for which they would like to have further correspondence post event. With conventional social network websites, the individual would have to collect personal information from the contacts, manually create a social network on the social network website and invite the contacts to join. Some of the contacts, however, may not be registered with the social network website, and will have to register before joining the social network.”

Bleam already provides much of this functionality. If you want to have the core capabilities of iGroups, you can use Bleam now. Bleam already allows you to IM, send public and private text messages, and share photos, contacts and files, through an instant local Bluetooth/ WiFi network with other Bleamers on iPhones or iPod touches.

Apple is adding other features including encryption for messages and providing a virtual GPS capability for devices that don’t have GPS capabilities. This is by no means an extensive list of all of the features of Apple’s iGroups technology. Click here to see the patent.

We also found it interesting that Apple uses the rock concert use case in their patent. This is exactly why we made Bleam. One of our team members was at a Phish concert on the east coast and could not get connectivity to get the set list for the concert or Twitter posts from fellow concert goers. When he came back, we decided to solve the problem by creating Bleam.

Apple proposes that iGroups would be useful for tradeshows, business meetings, weddings and rallies.  We agree and would add conferences, classrooms and sporting events. We’ve been hearing about use cases for Bleam, in this very same context as Apple’s iGroups, from people using our app.  Bleamers are on the cutting edge of mobile phone technology.

Here are some more informative blog post regarding iGroups:

• Apple patent to bring social networking to the iPhone?
• iGroups: Apple’s New iPhone Social App in Development
• Apple’s iGroups Patent Would Instantly Connect You With Nearby iPhone Humans

Tags: Apple, bluetooth, communications, iGroup, IM, iPhone, iphoneapps, itouch, locationbasedsocialnetwork, messenger, socialnetworking, WiFi