If someone were to describe the new iPhone app "Cloak" without giving away its name or intention as described by its creators, you might believe its primary purpose was to organize the locations of social media friends in a map so you can seek them out or simply note their activity. (The app pulls "check ins" noted by Foursquare and Instagram users.) In essence, that's what it does, but with an extra narrative spin added by inventors Chris Baker and Brian Moore. The pair has marketed the app as a tool for avoidance. If you can see where undesirables are, you know where not to go, Entrepeneur reported.
Persons of (I)interest (great CBS show, by the way) show up as bubbles when they're within two miles. After two hours spent at the same location, a person's bubble begins to fade. The app seems to suggest that four hours at the same place is too long; one's bubble disappears after that length of time.
"We feel like we've reached the point of social fatigue -- too many networks with too much information, all the time," Baker, who was inspired to create the app after running into his ex-girlfriend an awkward number of times, told CNN. "It's OK to turn off and pick up a copy of 'Walden' and just be alone."
People marked as especially avoidable (like an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend) will be bubbled with extra emphasis, or double-bubbled.
Probably, some people will use the app in the opposite way: to track those they'd like to run into or simply track people for the heck of it. For that, I suppose it makes sense for Baker and Moore to market their app in the way they did, lest their creation gets branded as the "Stalker App."
Marketing aside, the app has already proven useful to businesses checking in on the behavior of their customers, according to CNN.
"It worked out exactly as I had planned," Baker said. Indeed, the app got publicity on the "Tonight Show" and is ranked 14th in Apple's store.
