App Name: Voxle
Developer: AppBauer GmbH
Market: Google Play
Cost: Free
Since the creation of e-mail and chat rooms, there are new Internet-based social network concepts born every minute to make consumer’s lives easier and more manageable. LinkedIn made it possible for you to post your résumé and work experience to share with potential employers and Wikipedia enabled its users to write encyclopedia entries on virtually any subject into its online database. Voxle, a new location-based social networking app, allows its users to connect with people near you such as your neighbors, work colleagues and nearby friends.
To get started, you may opt to create a new profile or register under your Facebook username and password. Once you have arrived to your profile, you can setup it up in Settings, under the Edit Profile tab. Besides adding basic attributes like your gender, birthday and relationship status, this app goes more in depth in allowing you to add extra information your means of transportation, weight, height and even the number of pets you own. After setting up your profile, you can track how many people have visited your profile, who liked your profile and how many Voxle credits you have earned.
Voxle credits cannot be bought, but earned through becoming an active user in Voxle community by posting statues and sharing events frequently. With enough credits, you can earn up to an hour of time to spend using the app’s Superpower. Superpower enables you use special features such as a search engine with more accurate filters for quicker results. You can add Voxle users to your friend list by using the search tool or by sending an invite to your Facebook friends and phone contacts. The app will organize your friend list by location, and will feature their geographic location on a Google-powered map. This will come in handy if you want to drive to their exact location.
You can also post new “barks”, chat with your friends and subscribe to interest pages to discuss your favorite subject matters with other users. Barks are simply status updates where you can share what you’re currently doing, share events and photos and categorize them as either a general, an assistance or an emergency update. You will be able to see your and other Barks on the interactive map and able to like, follow and block other users’ Barks.
Voxle is a simple, social chat network without the complexities of useless features and a barrage of advertisements, as seen on Facebook. Its user interface runs smoothly and does not drain your battery at a fast rate. Although it doesn’t show initially upon the first use, Voxle has a tutorial slideshow located in Settings tab marked “Tour” for users who might have a difficult time navigating through the app.
This app could be best used for organizing social, local events to anyone who might want to keep in touch with their high school or college friends and could be beneficial to advertising firms or event promoters to inform people who live within the area about local events. Voxle could also be a great asset to local business to attract more customers by utilizing the Offers tab. The Offers tab will alert you with great deals and coupons to restaurants and other shops within your area.
Another feature that makes this app appealing is its strict, privacy settings. Like on any other social network, you can set your online status to “online”, “away”, “busy” or “invisible”. If someone is annoying you, you have the ability to block and report him or her for reasons including harassment or disorderly conduct. Being a mobile-only app made exclusively for Android, you can privately invite your friends to social events without posting it publicly to all of your followers or worrying about unwelcome guests dropping by unexpectedly.
I have also noticed that this app has similar features to a dating website. The thoroughly detailed profile tab, which also allows you to input how many children you have and whether or not you drink and/or smoke, resembles other dating social networks like Zoosk, in hopes of the user finding other people with like attributes.
When testing this app, I discovered that some of the attribute links in the Edit Profile tab do not work at all (which could work to your benefit due to the fact that you may not want to let your users know your income status, being one of the options in the profile settings; but I digress).
Being a fairly new app and due to the developer’s limiting their audience down to only Android smartphone users, this app will have a tough time competing with veteran sites such as Facebook, the revamped MySpace and Twitter. However, Voxle is a good app to use if you want to reconnect with your friends privately, improve your business or find singles to chat with online without any hassle or having to pay anything extra. You will need only 8.6MB of space and Voxle is free to download in the Google Play store.
