When it comes to social networking and finding things to do, The Hotlist for the iPhone is brilliant. It combines all the best features of Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and Foursquare, creating a world in which you can never be bored again.
The Hotlist’s only requirement is a Facebook account. Using that, it gathers up all your friends, scours their accounts for events they’re attending, and cross-checks them against venues that it finds near you with the iPhone’s GPS. Then the Social Networking category app divides up the information by location and person, and gives you a big list of what’s going on, who’s there – even the male-to-female ratio at a given location.
It’s a beautiful system that incorporates all kinds of information. Click the venue tab to find out about lots of different places around you – what they have going on, how far away they are, and what people have said about them on Twitter or review services like Yelp.
Alerts and lists of your “favorite” friends and venues let you know what’s going on in places you visit a lot or with people you like to hang around with. The Hotlist also lets you use a “check-in” feature, the same as with Foursquare, which lets you make note of where you are. Then the app uses that information to make recommendations of events and places you might like.
This app isn’t perfect – for all the listings of events, it still takes some hunting to find out exactly when many take place – but The Hotlist does a great job of getting all the best social networking features in one place.
