By Janie Willner, Marketing and Social Media Manager
Yopine’s new “People Around Me” feature employs proximal awareness technology to facilitate hyper-local polling and brainstorming. What does this mean for users? What does this mean...period? With People Around Me, Yopine users can post polls and brainstorms visible only to users who are in ambient contact with (i.e. do not have to be connected to) any WiFi signal/network. This hyper-local technology provides solutions for a diverse array of use cases. The following examples illustrate a few contexts in which People Around Me can be used:
1) Educational Response System: In university lecture classes, professors ask questions to measure students’ grasp of the material. Rather than relying upon an unspecific “show of hands” or expensive audience response hardware (e.g., iClicker), professors use People Around Me to direct polls or brainstorms just to students in the lecture hall. Professors will have the capability to prepare several questions before class and stage them throughout the lecture period.
2) Targeted Opinion Polling: Users can use People Around Me when they need to collect information from a targeted group of people. For example, if you are on a plane to New York City, it is likely that a significant number of your fellow passengers are from NYC and familiar with the area. Thus, if you are wondering where to grab dinner when you arrive, you can post a brainstorm just for the passengers of your flight to provide suggestions. Similarly, if you are at a tech conference such as the recent Apple WWDC, you can target a poll or brainstorm toward only the tech experts and enthusiasts in attendance.
3) Raffles and Contests: Many events include raffles and contests as a way to distribute fun prizes and promotional items to attendees. Yopine’s People Around Me function serves as a means to fairly and simply administer these contests and raffles. A brainstorm can be shared via People Around Me with event attendees only, with each response representing one’s entry into the raffle. This method also guarantees that external parties are unable to enter the contest remotely. Event organizers can “kill two birds with one stone” by taking advantage of the brainstorm raffle format to collect feedback from the event. A raffle brainstorm that asks, “How would you improve this event for next year?” uses the prize to incentivize participants to contribute ideas.
4) Social interaction: People Around Me also contributes greatly to the user’s social experience on Yopine. A user at a bar could ask, “What’s the best cocktail to order here?” and view responses from the other people at the bar. If the user is interested in pursuing a conversation with responders, he can easily find them in the vicinity. In future versions of Yopine he will also be able to start a personal conversation with other users within the Yopine app, by dragging his avatar over to the avatar of another user on the screen.