Out of the SxSW Startup Bus: Pairwise
South by South West (SxSW) , that creative, technology, music mashup happening in Austin Texas has given us, in the past, Foursquare and Gowalla in the past has done it again.
This year SxSW had a great idea. Stick 25 strangers on a bus for 72 hours as they drove to Austin, Texas and challenge them to launch six startup projects by the time they got there.
Enter Pairwise.
Pairwise is one of those six startups launched at SxSW over the weekend, created by two strangers from San Francisco (no surprise there!), Euwyn Poon, 25 a corporate law graduate and software developer and Brandon Leonardo, 26 a professional software developer.
The idea was born out of Euwyn's personal need to connect with business and software types as possible, this being his first SxSW and his first big opportunity to network. Euwyn saw it as the perfect product to release at SxSW when scores of developers, journalists, venture capitalist would be in and around Austin.
So what is it?
Euwyn says:
"Pairwise is a mobile app that facilitates business networking by letting members of a crowd identify specifically who they're looking to connect with. It further identifies hidden connections between people to make a "warm" introduction"
Simply put, you broadcast a short message about who you want to connect with and notifications are sent to people in the vicinity, anyone
interested can respond and meet up with you. A list of recent messages can also be browsed from people at your location.
Applications can be endless. Any large venue with business types could turn into a great opportunity for networking.
At the moment the beta release is limited to SxSW, but it has the capability to pretty much work anywhere baked into it right now. I fired up the mobile site and it is clean looking and functions very well. Facebook connect is built in to help you find connections straight away. Theres a lot of potential here for business' and individuals to really make use of Geo location to connect in a business friendly way.
Check it out. Head over to their mobile site here to try the app or find out more on the official Pairwise blog.
Daniel.
