Social proximity becoming mobile

A NEW technology project is paving the way for more accurate mobile marketing and applications, by combining Bluetooth and social networking. The LocalSocial technology framework is being developed by Dublin-based Rococo Software in partnership with University College Dublin and the National Digital Research Centre.

LocalSocial works by taking information about people and things close to a user and combining it with information from one or more of their social networks. The information is then made available to certain mobile applications in a simple way.

“It’s software that will help you connect things that your phone can see in the real world to things on the social web,” explained Sean O’Sullivan, head of Rococo Software. “We use Bluetooth on your phone to look for people and things near to you. You could think of it as some software on the phone itself that talks to software we put on the web, and the two of them work together.”

LocalSocial started out as a final-year computer science project in UCD. For the past few years, Rococo, which specialises in Java and Bluetooth technology, has suggested projects each year to the college.

The potential of LocalSocial was recognised by both Rococo and UCD, which approached the National Digital Research Centre. The centre provided research and commercial expertise to work with both parties, and gave them a neutral location where the project team could be based. A cash investment was part of the agreement.

Mr O’Sullivan said the partners in the project were hoping developers would see the possibilities for LocalSocial and build “cool apps”.

“You could use LocalSocial to extend games on Facebook, for example, to the real world. A developer could use LocalSocial to build a mobile version of Mob Wars, and then when players are near each other can play some Mb War interaction,” he said. “As we’re doing that, it’s also updating Facebook with that interaction. Friends could follow that interaction and help, maybe buying extra equipment. It will stitch together some real-world interaction between people who are close to each other with some web at the same time.”

The software could be adapted for use with proximity marketing, for example, where the application will send advertisements and information over Bluetooth to your mobile based on your likes and dislikes expressed on the social web, with users granting temporary access to their social information.

This approach benefits both advertisers and consumers. Access to information on social profiles is permission-based; users register with LocalSocial and grant access to social applications such as a user’s Twitter feed, Last.fm profile or Facebook page.

The project was awarded the Irish Software Association’s Collaboration of the Year last month.