While social networking allows us to get connected with more people, one app is using social network to ironically become anti-social. Meet Cloak, a so-called “anti-social app” that lets you spot where your social networking “friends” are so you can avoid them.
It is like stalking, but in reverse. I am pretty sure some of us have experienced the awkwardness of getting approached by a Facebook “friend” you have not seen in person for years. They ask how you have been and you tell them a generic “I’ve been doing well,” while at the back of your mind you just want to leave because you are getting late for work. Or what about bumping into your ex-spouse? Or your boss while you are ridiculously drunk?
Cloak checks out Foursquare and Instagram to pinpoint where your connections last updated their locations. You can simply look at the map and check the locations you need to avoid or flag certain people and receive a notification when they are located a few feet away from you.
Developers of the anti-social app say they will add more social networks, but definitely not Twitter, which they say has a “quite vague” geo-location data.
Curiously, one of the founders behind Cloak is Chris Baker, a former creative director for Buzzfeed with a penchant for developing anti-social apps. He developed a browser extension called “Rather,” which replaces “anything you want in your social feeds with things you’d rather see, like cats.” His recent project is called “Hate with Friends,” which determines if you and a Facebook friend mutually hate each other’s guts and even alerts you when another friend dislikes you.
“Personally, I think we’ve seen the crest of the big social network,” Baker wrote in an e-mail to Washington Post. “Things like Twitter and Facebook are packed elevators where we’re all crammed in together… I think anti-social stuff is on the rise.”
Cloak is available for free in iOS.
Source: Washington Post
