Mobile community for teenagers

What teenager hasn’t been in the situation of staying at home, having nothing to do, and desperately needing social activity? He’s got a whole bunch of friends but no really sufficient way of knowing where they all are and what they’re up to.
Is anyone in the neighbourhood in the mood for the movies, a cup of coffee, rock concert – or just anything?

With MyBuddyTracker teenagers can locate their friends easily, using their mobile phones or the Web. Locations are displayed by a map and/or text, depending on the user interface.

Features

• Find out your friends whereabouts in a simple way
• Groups of users can locate and communicate with each other wherever they are
• Users have full security and privacy, they can define their status – visible, invisible or leave a message: "I’m on vacation in the Caribbean – back on the 15th"
• Users can control permission lists and view who tried to locate them and when
• Scheduled location of your friends
• Customizable Web interface
  

Operator benefits

• Creates a mobile community. Users encourage friends to sign up, increasing subscriber base, traffic and revenues
• Built-in features for advertising and promotions
• Powerful and user-friendly administration features
• Adds value to infrastructure, easy integration with 2.5G and 3G location technologies

Location presentation

Location is presented as a circle on a map or as a text message, depending on the user interface. Presentation in a text message refers to a well-known landmark, point of interest, or intersections of main streets, i.e., "Joe is in the vicinity of Trafalgar Square, London."

Privacy issues

Throughout the development of MyBuddyTracker, privacy and security have been key design elements. No one has permission to locate a user without his or her permission. Users have full control over their privacy.

Technology

The developement of MyBuddyTracker is based on TrackWell’s extensive know-how and experience in the field and close cooperation with leading mobile operators and infrastructure providers. Among other things, MyBuddyTracker offers the following:

• Supports user interfaces in SMS, MMS, WAP, SIM-Toolkit/Browser and Web
• Is independent of any single location-determination technology
• Supports LIF standards and interfaces with major location platforms
• Highly flexible and scalable
• Modular design and development, easily adapted to individual operator's needs
• Flexible interfaces with billing systems and subscriber database
• Interfaces to major SMS-C and MMS-C vendors