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Meetro is a multi-network Social Messenger with Location-based Service s (LBS). It is compatible with AOL Instant Messenger , Yahoo! Messenger , MSN Messenger , Gtalk , Jabber , and ICQ . Meetro's features make it useful for meeting people with similar interests in a given area, as well as bundling multiple messaging protocols into one program. Meetro is located in San Francisco, California . Meetro is software that runs on Windows and Mac OS X operating systems. LAUNCH AND EARLY HISTORY Meetro launched on June 1, 2005. On August 14, 2005, Slashdot reported a rumor that Meetro was in talks to be bought out by search giant Google Slashdot reports that Meetro may be bought . Paul Bragiel, CEO of Meetro, has stated that the whole story was nothing more than 'rumors' although the publicity did bring a wave of new users. HOW IT WORKS Meetro differs from the other popular messengers in that users can input location specifications to see other online users in surrounding areas. Its location finder is currently strongest in the Americas and Europe but works the world over. Users unable to obtain a location can input latitude and longitude details to see how far away other online users are at a particular moment. Meetro works by actively scanning for the MAC addresses of wireless access points around a user's location. Then Meetro contacts the main database server and compares the MAC Address to a list of known access points. Subsequently it does some mathematical calculations to determine the Latitude and Longitude of a location. Once Meetro has calculated the general area (usually a quarter mile) of a user's physical location, it then compares it to others users and displays who's online within a quarter mile, half mile, mile, etc... A user's exact location is never displayed to other people on the network for privacy and security reasons. Meetro will only present that a user is within a range of 1/4 of a mile. Users can choose to make information of their location public, such as "I'm at the cafe on 2nd and Broadway." Recently, Meetro added support for business address look-ups in the United States as an alternative method for users to report their location. FEATURES Meetro allows users to create custom profile pages which can be searched and browsed by other users nearby. Meetro's profiles support feeds for videos, photos, and blogs in addition to the typical social networking profile questions. Users have the option of embedding dynamic feeds from their YouTube videos, Flickr photos, and their personal blogs directly into their profiles. Meetro is one of the few services offering 'profile aggregation' - crawling the web to aggregate a user's Digital Persona . Meetro is different then other social networks and messengers in the fact that as soon as you signup, you're able to talk with other users who are nearby instantly, even if they're not approved 'friends'. This is to encourage communication between nearby people. Towards then end of 2006, Meetro introduced features to display places and services that were nearby (in addition to people). Meetro will display nearby restaurants, cafes, and bars on a map. Meetro will also display the local weather and nearby Geotagged photos. Meetro has introduced a number of location based Web Widgets . Including a StatusBadge that will display a user's last known real-world location on their blog, email, or personal webpage. Meetro allows users to create real-time personalized groups within the client. These groups can be configured to show a specific subset of Meetro users grouped by any combination of: Status (away/available), Gender (male, female, unspecified), Minimum Distance, Maximum Distance, Keywords, Relation (friend, friend of a friend, unrelated, MeetroHQ). For example, you can create a group that includes all users that are between 3 and 4 miles away and are currently online. Meetro is one of the only messengers to have a rule-based grouping system, as opposed to other messengers which do not use any personal descriptors or location to sort and filter users. COMPANY BACKGROUND Meetro originally started in Chicago, IL with a small team working and living out of the same house. The team moved to district. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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