Google’s latest app tells friends when you're free to do something

Is talking to people to tell them that you’re available to socialise too much effort for you? There’s an app for that.

Google’s new Who’s Down app allows users to flag that they are free to hang out, meet up or generally socialise. Toggle the switch and it will list the user as available in their group of friends.

The toggle lasts for three hours or can be manually switched off if plans change.

Users can also designate what they’re up for doing, with a list of popular picks to choose from. Alternatively you can write your own, like a glorified status update.

The app will notify friends who have picked a similar activity – all those up for brunch at the local greasy spoon, for instance – once enough people indicate they are free. The app then automatically fires up a chat to allow friends to organise plans.

Conversations within the app disappear after 24 hours of inactivity, meaning they are a temporary of-the-moment chat, not a replacement for text messaging.

Ideal for organising remote events

The idea is so simple, but there are several activities that have been crying out for something similar, particularly group activities that can’t be done alone.

A good example is Bungie’s Destiny, which has elements such as raids that require friends to get together and play as a team to complete missions. They cannot be played with match-made strangers and must be played with pre-existing friends. Given the games can last hours, scheduling time to join a group can be difficult.

A toggle that says for the next three hours I’m available to raid, for instance, is something that could genuinely help organise groups of people separated by distance who connect online.

The app is available for both iOS and Android, but is currently limited in access by an invite system, similar to that used by Google for the roll out of Gmail in 2004. Google is clearly targeting students with the app, requiring users to enter the name of their school or college to request an invite, a similar process used by Facebook in 2004.

Google is not the first to try this type of service. A similar app called Shortnotice was launched in 2014 but has struggled to gain traction, receiving under 1,000 app installs on Android. Path designer Danny Trinh also launched an app for the iPhone called Free this year, which does much the same thing.

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