Walk into a room of people, and your smartphone can tell if you have a connection to any of them, if it can find the right data.
A social networking app called SocialRadar, released on Thursday, analyses smartphone users' social networks including Facebook and Twitter, and correlates that with location data, to let people know in real time about their connections to those around them.
The app aggregates and merges data from top social networks including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and Google+ with live location information from smartphones.
This enables users to find colleagues, friends, and friends of friends if they are connected on one of the networks.
This means you can see in real time the people around you with whom you share a connection across several services.
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"There are over a billion people with smartphones, and more than two billion social media profiles in the cloud, but no intersection of that information," says SocialRadar founder and chief executive Michael Chasen.
Chasen, 41, who founded the education software tool Blackboard in 1997 and sold it in 2011 for $US1.70 billion ($A1.95 billion), says SocialRadar can be useful for business networking as well as for socialising.
"I can walk into a restaurant and find three people I'm connected to," Chasen told AFP in an interview in SocialRadar's office in downtown Washington.
"All this is in the cloud if you can connect this information."
Chasen said he believes SocialRadar may be used for dating, "but I think it will be used for business too. It is the ultimate networking tool".
SocialRadar has been released in North America for the iOS platform for iPhones, and a version is in the works for Android and for Google Glass - which would enable users to get information delivered for easy viewing.
