Coloci founder Anurag Wakhlu gets an alert when he stops for coffee. He sees that a friend is three blocks away that he hasn’t seen in two years. They’ve kept missing each other via email and the opportunity is too good to miss; they meet right then to catch up.
Their meeting could have been a near-miss, as so often happens. But Anurag doesn’t like missed opportunities. ”I wanted to move online relationships offline easily,” Anurag says. “Coloci lets you find people offline who will be near you so you can meet face to face.”
You add your future plans, big or small, and share them on your social network where your friends can see you, which is how it got the nickname ‘Foursquare of the future‘ by BostInnovation, who says that Coloci could be the key to making location-based apps go mainstream. It’s also been featured in The Next Web, Killer Startups, VisionWeb and many others also singing its praise.
He came up with the idea because wanted to catch up with friends while he went around town for work and family activities. Fringe benefits are that you can discover destinations you didn’t know about and find people offline at networking opportunities at larger events. You can set alerts that tell you when your friends are close by, publish on multiple social networks and select your preferred privacy level.
You could be passing by people you are Twitter or Facebook friends with at any time- people who may be fun to meet face to face or have a business opportunity you’d never know about without meeting them in person. On the Coloci interface, you are always in the center of the radar. The interface shows a 20 mile radius around your planned locations with a feed view. If you see someone you’d like to meet, you can even connect with them through the app.
“It’s already catching on,” Anurag says. “I’ve spontaneously met up with multiple friends for coffee on the spot.” They’re always making improvements, too, recently adding a feature where you can tweet @ColociMe to update your plans, and there is a Coloci Facebook App in the works. You can get lots of good info by going to the Coloci Friends Twitter and Facebook Pages!
Thanks to Anurag for the interview! We hope your app to find people offline will get bigger than Facebook. 
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[...] Raj was cautionary about forgetting to convert the engagement offline. “If you’re promoting something online, you should supplement it with offline. The [...]
[...] Raj was cautionary about forgetting to convert the engagement offline. “If you’re promoting something online, you should supplement it with offline. The [...]