As a columnist here at Appolicious, I use the LinkedIn iPhone app almost as much as I check my Twitter feed. It’s a great way for me to connect with app developers and discuss projects they’re working on, or to see if they might be worth writing about.
That said, I’m very intrigued now that Sonar has added LinkedIn access to its app. Imagine checking-in to a coffee shop and finding out that you share a mutual connection with the guy sitting down to your left munching on a muffin. Suddenly, a new business opportunity opens up for you based on your love of pastries and a guy you both know named Tim.
That’s the sort of future Sonar could present. While this app has been around for a bit already connecting Facebook friends, I don’t think it became truly useful until now. I mean, I personally lack a burning desire to stumble into friends of friends of one of my Facebook chums. I wouldn’t be upset if it happened, but I’m not looking to start a conversation with every quasi-rando I see on the street.
To me, at least, business contacts are a different story. I can see how in the above example, someone getting harassed about apps as they enjoy a latte may be someone’s own personal hell. There will have to be all sorts of new social rules of conduct drawn into play for cyber-business stalking. But the Sonar app points at a much more upwardly mobile experience using LinkedIn than whatever was previously possible.
While other business-minded apps like CardMunch and Pocket Resume work on a more micro level, allowing you to slowly digitize your business cards and resume respectively, Sonar points at something greater – the impromptu business lunch.
It’s only strange that no-one thought of it first. Radar for LinkedIn is an app with a similar idea in that it uses geolocation to point out business that are on LinkedIn in your area, but it pulls up just short of Sonar’s ability to pinpoint actual people in your vicinity.
In a world where so many reporters are working as freelancers without the safety net of a big newspaper and subsequent office, Sonar is the app that could make finding great sources for stories easier than it ever has been before. And it would save some friends the frustration of posting Facebook statuses looking for anyone who ever owned a dog that bit someone, for example.
Maybe Sonar won’t catch on because the same people that might find it most useful would balk at manually calling-out exactly where they were at all times. But if it does succeed, it’ll make the LinkedIn app all the more powerful to the enterprising self-starter.
