After reading about a new type of social network, ever eager to try out something fresh I clicked the link and registered at aka-aki, a German based social network which has just launched an alpha version in English.
The point of the network seems to be to link to other aka-aki users who are near you via your mobile. When it detects another user via bluetooth on your mobile phone you will then be able to share photos and other information.
Setting up your account is a little difficult, unless you speak German that is. At long last I know what it is like for the millions of people around the world who come to sites in their local language, designed and created in English then translated. When the site is translated they often fail to translate everything including items in a form field. As a fan of Eurovision I had learned that the German for Great Britain is Großbritannien so managed to complete the registration after some initial confusion that the usual United Kingdom option was not there.
Help pages are also usefully in German, however I guess it is the alpha version and they are hopefully working on this.
An interesting concept and it will be interesting to re-visit when more pages are in English so that I can better understand how to use the site
I can see opportunities for marketers and political campaigners from such a site. Accounts programmed with promotional messages which then will alert other members of aka-aki who pass a bluetooth device, loaded with the service, giving details of a product or campaign issue.
The issue that I can see is that a lot of people, myself included, have bluetooth switched off a majority of the time due to increased battery usage, bluetooth spam and security fears. Maybe, just maybe, this will encourage me to turn my bluetooth back on.
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Christopher Wellbelove DL 