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Highlight for iOS updated with more location-based friend finding features

Highlight for iOS updated with more location-based friend finding features

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Highlight for iOS is an app with a singular purpose: to help you find nearby friends and friends-to-be. After you log in with Facebook, the app is meant to simply run in the background, and currently you're able to look at the app and see if people in your network have been nearby. The new update adds a real time aspect to the app, allowing you to check for nearby contacts right away when you open the app. It also has a new look with a slide-out lefthand sidebar that behaves much like the Facebook app's sidebar. There's also a new feature based on on the name of the app itself, so you can literally (and publicly) highlight certain people. It's a friends network designed on top of Facebook's own friends network, with a local angle.

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Highlight for iOS is an app with a singular purpose: to help you find nearby friends and friends-to-be. After you log in with Facebook, the app is meant to simply run in the background, and currently you're able to look at the app and see if people in your network have been nearby. The new update adds a real time aspect to the app, allowing you to check for nearby contacts right away when you open the app. It also has a new look with a slide-out lefthand sidebar that behaves much like the Facebook app's sidebar. Finally, and most obviously, there is a new feature based on on the name of the app itself, so you can literally (and publicly) highlight certain people. Highlights are public, so anybody in your network can see who you've highlighted.

Essentially, Highlight is a friends network designed on top of Facebook's own friends network, with a local angle. The app is expected to be the toast of the SXSW conference this week, where many of the social and tech elite may be using the app to find and save contacts. Whether regular humans will be equally interested is another story. There's no shortage of social networking apps out there, and among them Highlight pushes the envelope of sharing location data publicly. Then again, the buzz around this app seems to be big enough that it could break out of the tech bubble to a wider audience — the ambient nature of the app may seem a bit much to most, but the convenience of not having to bother "checking in" seems pretty compelling.