It’s now available on iOS, Android, and Web, and is open to all users for the first time. Friends don’t need the app to join your “Flocks” right away. They get a link via SMS or email that takes them to the browser version of FlockThere.

The inspiration for the app began when Sanjeev and I regularly met up to brainstorm app ideas. Sanjeev is habitually late to meetings and I’m habitually on-time. These asymmetries of meet ups cause anxiety on all sides of varying degrees depending on the person and the context. Anxiety is caused by the unknowns:

• Who is on their way to the meet up?
• Did I get the date, time, and location right or am I really early?
• Where are the people who are late? Did they forget we’re meeting up?
• How do I let everyone know where I am and why I’m late, or parking tips when it’s hard to find, landmarks, etc.

As we thought more about this issue and sought feedback, we concluded that there is a broader need for people to stay in sync in many of life’s social activities.

And by staying in sync, we mean seeing people’s locations while being able to communicate with everyone at the same time. So FlockThere provides real time group location sharing combined with free group texting, in a single view.

SMS, email, and phone calls fail in many scenarios—they are not optimized for real time group activities and don’t include real time location. Many group messaging apps have location, but as a distant after-thought. We wanted to create the best experience possible in addressing the need for friends to stay in sync during group activities.

As we began to design and build prototypes, we became more aware of a broad variety of use cases. Here are a few, but friends are coming up with more each day:

• Meet ups of all sorts: dining out, movies, meeting up with friends at a park, going to parties or a baseball game, gathering to attend a crowded parade
• Business meet ups: trade shows, conferences, sales and business development meetings
• Meeting up with service providers: drivers of taxis, limos, shuttles, pizza delivery
• Just staying in sync when the meet up location is dynamic: group on a night on the town, bar hopping
• Family: knowing your kids were dropped off at school safely or are ok on a field trip, on vacation at Disneyland
• Unusual circumstances: we’re all hearing on the news about reporters getting lost, captured, etc., because they were separated from their groups; social movements that require group location coordination

We are eager to get people to use the app and discover for themselves the use cases that are most compelling for them, and most importantly, to provide us with feedback so that we can improve the experience for our users.

Feedback: feedback@flockthere.com

Thanks,

Dan & Sanjeev