People+, a people directory and search app that’s available now on iOS, is coming to Google Glass in 2014.
The company bills its service as a “Wikipedia about professionals and companies,” and its unreleased Glass app was selected as a finalist this week at the DEMO Fall conference for emerging technology.
As the company’s website explains, People+ builds its database of companies and individuals via volunteer contributors and from publicly available sources. It takes that information and creates what it calls “an intelligent, curated directory of people and companies” that “helps you find who you’re looking for and remember people that you already know.” As VentureBeat suggested, it’s kind of like LinkedIn but without all the social features and just focused on finding out who’s nearby.
The company’s video demo shows how the Glass app might work:
You might think that there’s facial recognition going on, but founder Kate Scisel told me that’s not the case. (Google currently has a ban on facial recognition apps for Glass.) The app relies on the proximity of other users in the People+ directory. And she says users will be able to opt out if they don’t want to be found this way.
Anecdotally speaking, I would’ve loved an app like this for finding out who’s around at events I attend — whether it be our own SMX events or Google I/O or any other big gathering of people. That said, People+ may eventually have some big competition in the people search space on Glass; it’s not hard to imagine Google itself using Google+ profiles to provide a similar search/find functionality.
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