Neighbors - will the IM + geosocial network take off?

When in 2011, the company launches a “regular” geosocial network, entering the close market of Foursquare, Google Latitude, AlterGeo, and even integrates it into an existing client for instant messaging, this causes a decent share of skepticism.

Such attempts to integrate into the IM client were undertaken by Palringo in the mobile sphere, so it’s hard to call the idea a decidedly new one.

I admit, Neighbors service would hardly have attracted my special attention if it was not integrated into IM + (from SHAPE Services ), the multi-protocol client I used on almost all mobile platforms (starting with Windows Mobile and Symbian and ending with Android, iOS and Windows Phone - agree, the list is respect).
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I was not too lazy to find out how many people actively use IM + besides me :) It turned out approximately - 12.5 million users, a good launching pad for experiments.

So, let's take a closer look at the Neighbors / “Neighbors” service (now available for iOS on the iPhone and iPad, this week will also be released for the BlackBerry, and soon - on Android).





Despite the presence of the Russian localization of the IM + itself, when the Neighbors is turned on, we are greeted in English:



The priority of Neighbors in relation to other services is difficult not to notice, the point with its inclusion is higher than all other messaging protocols:



The “Details” sub-item simply loads the SHAPE Services website with information, which is not the most logical decision if the user has already purchased the Pro version of IM + to suggest him to get it again:



Finally a concise entry window. You can use the existing account on plus.im (used to store the IM + message history) or register a new one:



License Agreement in English. Carefully read :)



All fields at registration are required. This is not mentioned anywhere, but to register by entering only the name will not work.



And finally - the working window of the working service. Again, we see a mixture of translated and English-speaking interface pieces - however, there are more translated parts. So, in the left part there is a list of users, their information and address. On the right is a map based on Google maps and user avatars. Poured by Google Latitude - but to its credit, IM + works all very quickly, the map loads smoothly, no brakes and rough edges.



And here are the neighbors :) the map shows the time of the last update of the user's location, his name and avatar.



When you click on the user's avatar, additional information about the user appears, you can send a message to the user, make friends with him or block. Unfortunately, in the half-first night no one wanted to make friends nearby :(



Overseas users have been more friendly. In the chat you can see animated emoticons "buns".



In general, there were quite a few “neighbors” in Europe, even in the dead of night. Happy them even more :)



So, in the end, after testing a new service from IM +, you can say with confidence that a good “local” chat with geo-social network elements has turned out. There is nothing revolutionary with annoying wallpapers in Neighbors, but it works surprisingly well, stably and quickly. By the way, the current version of IM + 5.2 Pro seemed to me much less “heavy” than the previous ones, which is especially pleasing.

The service performs its direct function “to find someone nearby and chat” perfectly.

Oh yes, in the coming weeks there will be an IM + update, including support for VKontakte, Ya.Online services, a lot of bug fixes and one very interesting addition to the Neighbors service - which one is not yet known.

I hope my impressions were useful to someone. PS: Who is from Kiev, "we are neighbors" :)

PPS: Links to paid IM + Pro and free IM + versions.