Location Based Social Networking with the iPhone

By Barb Mosher (@barbmosher) Dec 15, 2008

Zannel, the instant media network - otherwise known as Twitter with multimedia - has released an application for the iPhone called CityWatch. Now you can let people know what's happening in cities all around them, sharing your instant updates on your iPhone.

Social Networking with Zannel

Zannel calls itself an instant media network. It's a social network, similar to Twitter, that enables its users to use various rich media assets in their status updates.

The social network, focused on visual bloggers and entertainers, can be used on over 1000 phones using the mobile web and WAP, or via the internet. You can update images, video and text with a single click.

You can also follow your favorite people by email update or SMS alerts.

Zannel was used during the National Democratic Convention by a group of bloggers. A group channel called PoliticsBlue was set up and 12 bloggers posted constant updates during the convention.

Mobile Awards

Zannel must be a good social network. It has received several awards including a Webby and a Mobile Excellence Award for Best Mobile Social Network.

The social network also has over 50 brand partners, one of whom is Verizon - which makes Zannel available on over 60 million handsets.

In an interview with Adam Zbar, CEO and Braxton Woodham, CTO, we got a sneak peek at the new CityWatch app for the iPhone.

CityWatch - Location Based Updates

Launched in conjunction with Apple, and available at the Apple App store now, CityWatch is a location-based status update application.

An Open Platform

The CityWatch application allows you to search through a map and see all the updates for a particular location. You can also view the updates via a text feed if you don't want to scroll through the map. The app was developed on an open platform and supports integration with other sources of geo-tagged media.

Currently, Flickr content is integrated into CityWatch giving you not only Zannel status updates, but Flickr photos and other content as well.

Selecting Locations to View

There are several ways to view updates. The first is by moving through a map and selecting a location. You can also select from a list of hot spots in a menu and select to view updates for your current location. The application uses the iPhone GPS to grab your current location and show you what's happening.