ZKOUT
01. What is ZKOUT?
:ZKOUT creates a bridge that connects your online and real world social networks. ZKOUT’s main ingredients -- location-awareness and inherent mobility — promote real world interaction between friends, family, neighborhoods, businesses, even strangers with common interests. To provide you with the highest, most personal level of interaction, ZKOUT lets you share as many types of media as possible, including photos, live video feeds and text messages, and allows for commenting on other members’ posts. The ZKOUT community will be built by its members. Other social networking sites typically tie their members to computers. ZKOUT provides a unique social fabric that severs that tie.
02. How People Use ZKOUT
San Francisco, Saturday Morning. Chris just finished shopping and running errands, and now wants to have a cup of coffee and would like some company. Instead of calling all his friends that he thinks might be in the neighborhood, he checks ZKOUT on his mobile phone to see if any of his friends are nearby.
Stockholm, Thursday Night. Sven’s hotel has two empty rooms for the night. He posts an ad on ZKOUT that people within one mile of the train station can receive. He chooses that distance because he notices that 300 people are logged in to the ZKOUT network within this radius, and he feels that this is enough to book the two rooms.
New York City, Tuesday Afternoon. Sarah finds a small store selling dresses she really likes that cost $20. She takes a picture of a cute dress and uploads it with the description “Cute cheap $20 dress” to share with her friends. From now on, people in the area will find this picture and store if they search for something like “cheap dresses close to here.” Or someone planning a trip to New York City can find the same dress by searching for “cheap dresses in New York City.”
Paris, Sunday Lunch. Dana is visiting Paris by herself. She does not want to eat alone, but she knows no one in France. She sets her ZKOUT status to disclose her location to other users in her vicinity with the message “looking for company for lunch in an hour.” Jean-Claude sees the message and contacts her through ZKOUT. Soon, they meet and have lunch together, the first of what may be many enjoyable encounters between them.
03. Why Use ZKOUT Now?
Recent trends can assist ZKOUT in capturing the market:
- Mobile phones are finally powerful enough to be used for advanced Internet usage.
- Service providers recently started to offer flat rate data plans, so large video files can be shared easily and inexpensively.
- Many mobile phones and PDAs sold today are GPS-enabled, and this number keeps growing quickly.
- Online communities are an established way of communicating but are now ready to be taken to the next level, where the online experience is integrated with a mobile one.
- While companies are beginning to integrate online social networks with mobile communications, none are doing it in a way as robust as ZKOUT.