not a new idea- they had keychain gadgets in japan years ago that did a similar thing. but i think it would make a great app, good for concerts, malls, the bdo etc

basically you enter a selection of interests into the app -for example, favourite singer, favourite tv star

when you are in proximity of someone running the same app, who interests match, both parties are alerted

ie. 2 matching interests, and you get vibration. 5 matching, a couple of beeps. 10 matching, loud_alarm.m4a

then you hunt the person down and hit it off in a weird 2010 new-social way

con 1. so i guess the broadcasting aspect would be difficult. maybe the app creates an ad-hoc wifi connection, with a coded ssid containing the validated interest selections. or bluetooth. i have no idea

con 2. this would be huge with 12 – 16 year old tweens but i dont think many of them carry iphones around

good point re: bluetooth

and wifi would probably need some dirty workarounds to get going

just expanding on the ssid suggestion … in the CBD, you get loads of signals from wireless networks. NETGEAR_1, LINKSYS, McCAFE etc

so can 3rd party apps monitor these broadcasts? im pretty sure you could spoof a ssid from the host iphone, with a coded ssid like:

TS01-SW02-BK03 …etc

so when the client app recieves the ssid name, it deciphers the name, TS01=Taylor Swift fav singer, SW02= Star Wars fav movie, BK03= burger king fav food. then these are matched to the clients interests and booyah. maybe?