A new app claims to be the social network for the anti-social.
While most social media apps focus on helping you get closer to your friends, Cloak uses location data to make it easier for you to avoid your connections.
The app pulls in location information from your social networks to show you where friends are so you can avoid accidentally bumping into people you don't want to see.
Connect Cloak to Foursquare and Instagram and the app brings up a map displaying your location and the locations of friends who have checked in nearby. If there's someone you want to avoid, select "flag" and the app will alert you when that person gets within a certain radius of you. A half mile is the default radius but you can set it to be as small as one block or as big as two miles.
IMAGE: CLOAK
For now, the app only pulls in location data from Foursquare and Instagram, so it's only useful if you follow the people you're trying to avoid on these two networks. The developers say they are working on connecting the app to more services in the future, though Twitter will likely not be among them.
"The location data just isn't there," the company explains in their iTunes description. "Most users have it turned off and even when it's on, it's quite vague."
The app is the project of programmer Brian Moore and Buzzfeed's former creative director Chris Baker. This is not Baker's first venture into software for the anti-socially-inclined. Baker leftBuzzfeed in the fall to work on Rather, a Chrome extension that helps users block unwanted content in their Facebook feeds.
In an email to the Washington Post, Baker said: “I think we’ve seen the crest of the big social network … I think anti-social stuff is on the rise. You’ll be seeing more and more of these types of projects.”
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