Microsoft has never been popular in the area of social networking, however, it has made some considerable attempts in this area as well, specially on the business side of socializing such as the acquisition of LinkedIn and Yammer. However, its more detailed attempts in social networking, like the social networking site for students, Socl, shut down last month.
Now, the company is taking one more step in the direction of social networking with a new iMessage app called “Who’s In,” which helps friends in planning functions or trips such as movie plans, trip to a nearby attraction or a social gathering. This app was launched today on the iMessage App Store. It still does not have any versions for iPhone or iPad, and can only be accessed via iMessage.
When the app is launched for the first time, some events appear on the screen which are: “Eat and drink,” “Watch a movie,” “Visit an attraction,” or “Create your own.”
Once an option is chosen, Who’s In takes the help of Microsoft’s search engine Bing for preparing suggestions regarding what could be done, for instance, it pulls movie timings from a nearby cineplex. Such suggestions appear only after the user agrees to share his location with the app. With just a few more taps, you may get into other details as well, such as an event’s time, its name, location and descriptions.
The app uses provided information for creating a card with a thumbnail image with location name and time, which will aid in creating a conversation. The images used will however be generic ones. Recipients may tap on thumbs-up to indicate they are ‘in’ or thumbs-down to indicate they are ‘out,’ a practice from where the app derives its name from. The unique thing with this app is that it permits the event’s organizer to enter in multiple dates/times, which also makes Who’s In as a group polling app.
For any group event, there is always a lot of blabbering regarding the times and place people are convenient with, and this app allows the organizer to send out the event’s card and see how many of the guests are compatible with it. Interestingly, long back, Google created a social app which could gather friends for hang outs by the name of “Who’s Down.” It collapsed due to lack of users.
This app is not Microsoft’s first attempt with the iMessage App Store, and nor it is its very first social app for iMessage. Microsoft has previously launched i Message apps for OneDrive, Yammer, and Bing in addition to a Halo sticker app. The company has also created a similar event planning app by the name of #MovieDate, which is more inclined towards dating.
