[shawnreilly]

My own personal opinion; The concept of Ambient Social Discovery should have been approached with more sensitivity towards the Users privacy. Lots of people were kind of creeped out by the concept; it was just too personal. Because of this, people were less likely to give it a try. I believe this placed the Ambient Social Discovery space into somewhat of a fringe Service, where technologists and early adopters were willing to give it a try because it's cool from a Technology standpoint, but your average Users wouldn't try it out unless their Friends had used it (aka it had caught real Traction, chicken and the egg). So this kind of put Sonar (and others) in a bad position because not only do they have the regular challenges that every Startup faces, they also had to deal with a negative perception of the concept in general (which was forward thinking at the time). I believe this greatly influenced the growth rate and adoption of many Ambient Social Discovery Apps/Services.

Disclaimer: I bootstapped a competitor to Sonar, Highlight, and Glancee during this time period, but we never made it to Launch (problems with execution). My opinions above are based on all the (exhaustive) customer validation work that was performed.