The new social network Groovr has just emerged from beta and is now available to anyone looking for, well, a new social network. It’s not like we need another social network to generate more continuous partial attention. However, Groovr’s interface for the iPhone and iPod touch outshines the Facebook experience on mobile Safari and tosses in a few extra features you won’t find on any other mobile social network. Maybe you and your friends are so entrenched in Facebook you won’t be willing to give Groovr a try. Or, maybe you’re like us and just plain tired of dodging sheep and pokes in Facebook and just need to connect with your friends on the go. If so, you’ll find Groovr much better than Facebook for connecting to your friends from your iPhone or iPod touch.
Groovr offers a nice package of social features and has managed to make those features work quite well on the iPhone or iPod touch. After signing up for a free account, point your mobile Safari to groovr.com/iphone to see your Groovr home page. This home screen will look familiar to you with a matrix of square, iPhoney icons giving you one-tap access to Groovr’s social tools.
With Groovr, you have many of the features you need to connect with other people. You can manage your public profile, invite friends into your circle, browse for new friends, and share photos and videos. When managing the contacts in your friends list you can also create a Trusted Circle of Friends. This lets you interact with your closest friends without updating everyone else in your network.
Groovr’s Browse feature lets you find people by location. It has an embedded map (va Yahoo! Maps) surrounded by local Groovr users, and all the recent network activity associated with this geographical location. This includes messages, photos, videos, and any people who are nearby.
One interesting feature, called Checkin/Checkout, lets you quickly broadcast your location so your network will know where to hook up with you at any time. Tapping on Checkin brings up a list of popular places based on your location set in your profile as well as your favorite places that you have saved. The list also includes places from other people in your network who have checked in somewhere nearby you, and you can create new places that are not already on the list. Checkout enables you to remove your current place from being seen by other Groovr users.
Sending messages to people in your network is simple in Groovr. Like most social networks you can visit your friends’ public Groovr pages and leave comments. You can also start live chats, or you can use the Shoutout feature which works similar to Twitter letting you send out quick messages to your network all at once.
Groovr is simple to set up and it’s easy on the eyes. Groovr not only looks great on the iPhone, but also on the desktop browser as well. Unlike Facebook, Groovr is visually appealing, and it’s customizable without being cluttered like that internet junkyard known as MySpace. No single feature in Groovr is exceptional on its own, but when you add them all up and wrap them in a kick ass iPhone interface, you have the very best mobile social network available today.
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