Moot introduces me to interesting people in coffee bars

Written on 5th July 2008                                                                                                              1 COMMENT
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

One thing I used to love about living in New York, was my favorite coffee bar: The Lotus on Clinton and Stanton. In the weekends, I grabbed my Macbook, sat down for a good ol’ cup of American coffee, and started browsing away. Sometimes I started a talk with one of the other visitors – as New Yorkers are always eager for a chat about life. I miss that in Holland, where most people tend to be more closed and busy with themselves. But now it looks like an app from Norway-based software agency Ground Control might help me to get back into that New York vibe. Moot connects you to people who are using the same Wifi spot as you. Isn’t that cool?

When I attended one of my classes at New York University in 2006, Scott Heiferman, CEO and co-founder of MeetUp, gave a guest lecture. He told us that online services should be all about helping people. The goal of his start-up was to connect people in real life by using the web. Well, that obviously worked. Moot has the same purpose, so what will happen with this service?

A local Pownce

So Moot sort of works like a local Pownce: it’s all about sharing media. After creating an account, you can select the music, video, and images you’d like to share. Short note here, you can only share stuff for which you have the copyright. People who are on the same wireless network can browse through these files and download whatever they want. If they like what they see/ hear, they can express their appreciation by giving you “respect”. There’s the solid basis for a good chat. Instead of walking up to random people, you’ll will now know whether you like someone’s weird/ good/ tremendous taste. How’s that for randomly meeting interesting people?

Where’s the Mac app?

Unfortunately, Moot now only works on Windows platforms (also the mobile ones by the way). They’ll have to launch a Mac app as soon as possible, since they’ll desperately need the early adopters. Moot is only fun when a lot of people use it, and there are some barriers for people who aren’t used to services like Twitter. Most early adopters own Macs – visit a tech conference if you don’t believe me — thus the guys from Ground Labs have some work to do.

As soon as they’ve got that figured out, I’ll hang up some flyers in my coffee bar – so I’ll never miss an interesting person anymore.

By the way, the design of the Moot site is uber trendy, don’t forget to watch the magnificent intro movie – and no, I’m not exaggerating here.