Whether MagnetU catches on to quite the same extent as social media sites such as Facebook remains to be seen, but for many, the appeal of being alerted every time they are in the vicinity of someone who has the same “social desires” as they do will undoubtedly be enormous.
MagnetU describes itself as the first real-world street network; essentially this little device acts as “a bridge between your online digital life and the real world” by broadcasting your social media profile to everyone around you. Whether you are looking for the perfect love match, want to meet people with similar hobbies or are more interested in making business contacts, all you need to do is go to MagnetU.com, fill in your social desires, and then sign in to Facebook, Twitter and other social network sites to receive alerts each time a “compatible” individual passes nearby.
You can even change which particular social desire you wear at any given time so that you can look for your soul mate while you’re out socializing and a potential business partner when you’re at a business conference.
Although critics of MagnetU point out that machines are notoriously bad at people-matching and suggest that society already faces enough distractions from social media without this addition, it could just turn out to be another one of those technological necessities that we can’t do without, if only because everyone else is using it!