echoer.com

Have you ever wondered what others around you in public spaces are thinking? Ever wanted to let fellow mall-goers know just how terrible you found a meal at the food court?

A Montreal-based startup has just launched an innovative new mobile application which hopes to forever change the face of social media.

Echoer, released last week as  a free app for iPhone, aims to foster real-time, local conversation by channelling messages between users in the same location.

Users post thoughts, known as Echoes, which are then amplified, or made more popular, by other users. This amplification makes the Echoes spread more rapidly.

Echoes are made more relevant through grouping within virtual geographically-oriented spaces known as echo chambers.

The app values relevance, in addition to popularity, in how it represents thoughts to users. The user interface is dynamic—echoes are presented visually as bubbles which change in size and move over the screen.

“Visualisation was key. Information seems to be presented now very much in streams,”  Echoer co-founder Daniel Cowen said.  “We wanted to bring it to life. We really wanted people to feel the thoughts around them. “

“And we wanted to key in relevance. We wanted you to be able to tell what mattered most to the people around you, not just what they were saying.”

Interaction between fans at sports events, concerts, and art exhibits will be some of the first promoted uses for the network. While at the stadium or in a museum, users enter the event’s echo chamber via the app on their smartphone and can instantly share their views on the event in real-time.

In the coming weeks, Echoer will be working with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to encourage visitors to comment on the current Feininger exhibition.

The inspiration for the application came from the personal experiences of one of the project’s co-founders.

“You can be on Facebook, you can be on Twitter, and you can see what your friends and the people you follow are thinking, and yet we don’t know what the people in the same places as us are thinking at a given moment in time. We don’t know how they’re reacting to the same experience that we’re having.”

“It’s almost the irony [in] the world of social networking. We can know what people are doing every second of the day, and yet the people in the very same places as us we’re still kind of in the dark about what their views are or what issues matter to them most.”

Groups like bands, student unions, media outlets, and local businesses can set up their own echo chambers at their physical location on Echoer’s map to channel their fans’ and customers’ feedback.

Cowen envisages the app changing how we interact with those around us, even among those within the same broader community.

In the coming months, Cowen in his team will invite McGill students studying in the library to communicate silently with those around them during exam period. He feels that the combination of the stress of exam period, the need to procrastinate, and the app’s ability to help students break from the confines of the quiet space of the library will combine to give some interesting interactions between users.

“We thought the whole library twist was a really interesting one. It’s one of those spaces where you’re not meant to speak, and you’re not really meant to be on your phone,” Cowen said. “We figured there would be some comedic thoughts going around the libraries during exam time.”