Friends Around

Tip: Getting started

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 10:57:43 -0400

Ok so you’ve downloaded Friends Around and are all set; your pictures uploaded to your profile and your privacy is set to your personal options.

All of the sudden you have five people requesting to be your friend, some are trying to chat with you, and for sure you’ve received some winks. Great way to meet new people isn’t it? But, how do you find your real friends?

Here’s how I do it:

1. Add friends from Facebook, Twitter and your address book.
Go to your friends section and click on the + sign over there at the top right. Friends Around will scan the database to find which of your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and your address book are already using it, and send a request to friend you.

2. Check-In and share.
Next time you’re at your favorite hangout spot check-in and share with Facebook, Twitter and foursquare!

BUT WAIT…THERE’S MORE TO IT.

Yesterday I went to a new ceviche restaurant (yes, we’re in Miami). I checked in and shared it on Facebook and foursquare. Once you do that, the next screen is a confirmation of your check-in and…voilà…an invite button! I was able to invite my friend to join me.

It’s such a neat feature, not only do Friends Around check-ins let your friends know where you are, you can actually interact with them directly.

See my conversation from the invite screen once I checked in:

“Come over! There’s a 10 minute wait so you still have a chance to make it on time.”
“Ok, ok I’m almost there.”

3. Scan for friends again.
We are experiencing incredible surges of new user signups. It still fascinates me to tell the story of our first month after launch. We launched in April and expected 30K users to sign on that month. What did we get? Well, 4 months later we are very close to 300K.

So, because of this, I constantly scan for friends…you never know who just installed the app today.

Well, those are my tips on getting started. Keep adding friends to your community! It’s quite a handy thing to use when you’re out and about.

New gifts available!

Mon, 14 Jun 2010 14:19:43 -0400

Get your FAMEs ready because there’s something new in our gift store today!

There’s much more so go now and see what other gifts we have available.
Don’t have FAMEs left? Start earning them by sharing and logging in everyday.

Let us know if you have any particular gift ideas you wish to see on the store.
Looking forward to read your suggestions!

Happy Birthday!

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:53:11 -0400

We are celebrating 2 birthdays today at the office.
Egor and Luciano are 1 year older today!

I wonder how many gifts they’ll be getting today from the Friends Around gift store!

New update ready!

Thu, 20 May 2010 15:57:47 -0400

Lots of cool new things to announce for our latest update which is available now!

Did you install it already? Join the more than 150,000 users that have downloaded already around the world!

HERE’S WHAT’S NEW:

Find your Facebook and Twitter friends!
Check in to your favorite places around using foursquare!
Optimized map usage: load more button, group people, loading people as you scroll around!

We’re making it easier to connect and share with friends whether they’re around your neighborhood or anywhere in the world!

We're part of Tech Crunch Disrupt!

Mon, 17 May 2010 15:39:45 -0400

Next week we’re going to NYC to attend TechCrunch Disrupt. This event is organized by TechCrunch and is hosting a very interesting list of speakers, see here.

Topics discussed will take a look at “societal changes in how we consume and share information, and why.” The 3 day conference will focus on how these changes are platform development and business strategy in media, advertising and technology.

We’re excited to be a part of this and looking forward to meet and share our story with as many attendees, speakers, media as we can!

Many videos and pictures coming up!

Friends Around + iPad

Mon, 10 May 2010 16:04:47 -0400

Our iPad app has been holding steady in the Top iTunes charts for Social Networking (free iPad Apps).

Its neat interface works really nicely with the iPad and you can enjoy features like group chat, view nearby users, send gifts, see who visits your profile (picture above) and more.

Try it out and send us a note. We can’t wait to hear what you think!

Load more!

Fri, 07 May 2010 11:47:31 -0400

Here’s a cool tip for when you want to see more people on the map on Nearby.

Go to Nearby, tap on List view. Scroll down and tap on More. This will load 30 people at a time. It looks like this…

You will start loading the people around you first, so it always depends on where you are at the time.

You want to see more tips? Go watch our short videos here.

Sharing is...

Wed, 05 May 2010 14:30:33 -0400

…profitable!

Every time you share your accomplishments on Facebook or Twitter you get 20 Fames!
You can earn a total of 200 Fames daily just by doing this! Brilliant.

Here’s a list of other ways you can earn these most coveted Fames:

Sharing on Facebook: 20 Fames
Sharing on Twitter: 20 Fames
Daily Login: 10 Fames
Receive a SuperStar rating: 10 Fames

At Refresh Miami Here’s a short clip where Michael...

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:32:06 -0400

At Refresh Miami

Here’s a short clip where Michael presents his experience on developing the FriendsAround.Me app for the iPad. Some differences between iPad and iPhone to note.

Presenting at Refresh Miami

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 09:46:46 -0400

We’re excited to be presenting at Refresh Miami tomorrow and we’ll be covering the topic: iPad in a week. We’ll be sharing our experience of developing for iPad.

We’re looking forward to having great conversations with our fellow South Florida techies!
And pictures will be posted on Friday…stay tuned.

Buy gifts with your FAMES

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:10:36 -0400

Accumulating FAMES, our virtual currency, not only gets you ranked higher on the Top Users list, they also let you buy gifts from our store!

You earn FAMES through a variety of different actions like:

-login in everyday
-sharing with Facebook and Twitter
-receiving a SuperStar rating on your pics: the highest rating possible

Earn your FAMES, get ultimate buying power and send gifts to your friends. Joke around, be sweet, remind them of something…have fun!

Here’s a gift I received today…

And then, when you go to your profile you see a list of gifts that you’ve received.

We are working hard on including more cool gifts which will be available in our upcoming update! Great plans are in the works for the gift store so stay tuned for more details.

In the meantime, let us know what you would like to see in the gift store! Any suggestions?

Find people around you!

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:03:25 -0400

The Nearby feature is pretty cool because you can find anyone that’s around you on a map.

I can zoom in and talk to this friend if I tap on his little icon.

That takes me to his profile, where I can do any sort of interaction including adding him to a group chat I have going on presently or chat with him privately. (*This is a new thing on the latest update - so remember to upgrade for this!)

It’s really easy and lot’s of fun. The best thing is that he will be getting a push notification - alert on his phone letting him know that I’m trying to communicate with him.

Remember you can always select your privacy! If you want to meet new people you can set your profile to be open. If you rather just talk to your friends and not have strangers contact you, you can select “Chat with Strangers” OFF. You’re in control.

Have you tried this out yet? Go ahead try it out and let us know what you think.

New version 1.1.3 now available

Sun, 25 Apr 2010 11:45:16 -0400

Wow! What a crazy past couple of weeks it has been at Zila Networks with FriendsAround.Me going live on April 9 and almost instantly topping the charts worldwide!

We have surpassed our expectations with a huge number of registered users, a great word of mouth rush on Twitter, and many more things are in the works already that will definitely will attract some more! Stay tuned for that.

For today we have a new version ready to update! Get it here on iTunes.

You’ll find:

-Tweaks to the UI
-Improvements on security
-Improvements with localization
-Fixes on Chat
-You can now block users that you don’t want to interact with

…and more.

Much of what our users requested and suggested was implemented in this version, so check it out and continue to let us know what you think!

Another version is already being worked on with more functionality and more of what our users want. So, stay active and get your voice heard!

If you haven’t downloaded, well, what are you waiting for? Go see why everyone is talking about it!

Easily connect with friends around you and all over the world,...

Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:12:32 -0400

Easily connect with friends around you and all over the world, at any time right from your phone.

Usage after only 2 hours!

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 18:41:01 -0400

We’ve gotten a really good download and spread across the US in just 2 hours from going live on iTunes!

We are live on iTunes!

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 17:09:59 -0400

We’re excited to let you know that you can now download Friend Around Me for iPhone and iPod Touch on the iTunes App Store!

It’s a FREE download! Just use your Twitter or Facebook accounts to log in and get started now. We hope to see you in there soon!

New York Times coverage!

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:25:28 -0400

New York Times tech writer Roy Furchgott got a chance to test our app last week and here are his initial thoughts on a post called “App Mashes Up Social Network Functions”.

We are excited that Roy got a chance to play around with it before it’s even out to the public, and looking forward to getting users to interact with it some time soon!

We are sure users will benefit from easily connecting with people on Friends Around Me. As soon as I started interacting with our beta testing group, I couldn’t wait for it to be live on the App Store!

Thanks Roy for your time to check it out!

iPad version has been approved!

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:35:44 -0400

We are extremely excited to let you know that the iPad version of our app has been approved by Apple today.

Go download it on iTunes now!

We have submitted to Apple for review!

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 11:23:40 -0400

Great news! We submitted the app to Apple very early Friday morning and late Friday evening we submitted the app version for the iPad too!

They are both now currently under review now. We hope to have news for you as soon as we get approved!

Here’s a picture of our Miami team at 2am right after we submitted.

Keep visiting our homepage too and check out the status.

iPad anyone?

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:50:36 -0500

We’re giving away an iPad to the person that can help us come up with a company slogan.

Follow @friendsaround on Twitter
Visit our website & learn more about the Friends Around Me App
Submit your slogan idea by tweeting this:

My slogan for the #FriendsAroundMe iPad give away contest http://ow.ly/1dhJE is: { Replace This With Your Slogan }

Check out the details here.