A new iPhone app wants to help you avoid running into people you don’t like by showing you their latest check-ins on one big green map.
Cloak, which launched earlier this month, is an app that bills itself as the antisocial network. The app pulls geo-location data from other apps to show users the locations of people they know.
“Avoid exes, co-workers, that guy who likes to stop and chat — anyone you’d rather not run into,” the app says in its description.
The way Cloak works is users connect the app to their Foursquare and Instagram accounts. The app then pulls geo-location data from their friends on those social networks. Cloak then displays where a users’ friends are on a map, based on those users’ latest check-ins.
Users can also flag specific people. When a flagged person gets within a certain range from the user, Cloak will send the user a notification.
The app is a pretty clever way to keep track of where a users’ friends are, but there are a few flaws.
For starters, Cloak doesn’t pull data from Facebook, the most important social network of all. Fortunately, the company said it plans on adding more social networks in the future.
“We’ve got a lot more planned for Cloak, with Facebook being pretty important,” the app reps told The Times in an email statement.
The other issue with the app is that it will only let you know the whereabouts of users who actively use Instagram and Foursquare to check in at places. That means there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll run into those friends who are allergic to technology or simply aren’t fans of checking in at locations.
The app is available free for Apple iOS users. For now, there are no plans to create an Android version of the app.
Los Angeles Times
