This friend-tracking software is still in alpha, but addresses a problem I’ve had.

I was with a group recently – we were attending the NYPD graduation at Madison Square Garden in New York City.  The place was a madhouse, and we got split up a few times.  We were separated on the order of a block or so at one point.  It’s times like these when it would be excellent to be able to look at your phone and know the location of everyone in your party.

Here are my needs if this is going to become something very useful and not just a social networking toy:

1. Battery Life – my phone gets about 8 hours as it stands now.  What will this do to it?  Constant data and GPS use will hurt.

2. Good mobile user interface – included in this is the need to be able to quickly restrict your region of interest to just the friends on your current trip, for example, and it must be more convenient to use than calling the person really quickly.

3. Seriously configurable privacy settings – you should be able to set times of public and private locations, etc.

4. Broadcast meeting points – in order to beat the convenience of a phone call – you have to be able to easily broadcast meeting points and messages to the group in a push fashion – like SMS.

I think this software could almost be considered a google map hack.  Will this be a problem if they get big and start to make money?

Update: This does have a messaging feature. I think the application has to be running though. What is needed is a way to push people into the app if they aren’t in it initially. Like sending an SMS to those who aren’t currently using the app and sending an in-app message to those who are.