[shawnreilly]

I disagree; I think it's a great idea that has (still) never been realized. The implication of Ambient Social Discovery is real-life interactions. It is an online to offline transition of Social Media. Traditional Social Media has created somewhat of a Social Oxymoron; People sitting next to each other staring at their phones to satisfy Social wants and needs. Ambient Social Discovery has the implication of connecting people sitting next to each other, put the phones away, and have the opportunity to satisfy Social wants and needs in person, in real life. This is why I disagree with the 'stupid idea' comment; In my opinion, this is a literal example of leveraging Technology to increase real life capabilities (in this case, enhanced Social awareness and knowledge). The reason it didn't work is because it was not executed properly. It did not provide value. It creeped people out

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.

[nostrademons]

That could be deliberate, though. People may deliberately want more boundaries from anonymous means of communications. They post on Reddit instead of Twitter when they don't want folks to know who they are; they tweet instead of text when they don't want to address any particular person; they text instead of call when they want to downplay awkward pauses in the conversation or hide that they're multitasking; they call instead of videochat when they don't want the other party to see their facial expressions.

The customer validation results you got could be explained by a prestige hierarchy in social interactions. In general, addressing people directly and hiding as little of yourself as possible signals higher status, because it implies that you are less ashamed of who you are. Nobody's going to say "Yeah, I'm a hermit who spends all my time trolling people anonymously on Reddit", they'll say "Yes, of course I want higher quality face-to-face interactions." But when it comes to their moment-to-moment decisions, very often they would rather troll people on Reddit.