Highlight 1.1

Highlight 1.1 just went live in the App Store.  It’s our biggest update since we launched and we’re really excited to show it to you.  Here are some of the more notable improvements:

Nearby now

Highlight now tells you which people in your timeline are still nearby.  For these people, the timestamp above the map will say “now”.  This makes it easier to know when friends might still be around to meet up, or to find people who are in the room with you.

Search

The upper right of the feed now has a search box, so you can quickly find anyone from your history. Also, you can search for anyone nearby by name, even if they’re not currently showing up in your feed.  This will help you when you are talking to someone in a crowded room and want to pull up their profile.

Redesigned navigation

A new left-hand navigation panel gives you quick access to things like your profile, your blurb, and your settings.  It also provides a quick way to pause Highlight, which stops location services from being used until the next time you open the app.  This is a good way to save battery life in an environment like SXSW.

Nearby now, search, and left-hand navigation:

                 

Highlighting

Next to the “Message” button on the profile you’ll now see a new button: “Highlight”.  Highlighting is a lightweight way to mark people who seem interesting, or who look like they’ve done cool things.

Highlighting is public, so you can look at other people’s profiles and see who they have highlighted.

The people you have highlighted (and the people who have highlighted you) are saved to folders in the new left-hand navigation panel, so you can pull up their profiles anytime.  Highlighting will also help the system know what type of people you think are interesting so it can better tune your notifications.

Highlight people who seem interesting:

                     

Friend and follow

At the end of each profile you can now find links to the person’s Facebook and Twitter profiles.  This provides a quick way to friend or follow people you’ve enjoyed meeting.  You can add your Twitter handle to your own profile in the settings.

We’ve also made a lot of smaller improvements and have continued to improve things like notification relevance and battery life.

We tried hard to build the new features in a way that didn’t complicate the interface.  Please let us know what you think!  You can get the update here.

For those of you who will be at SXSW, we will be there all week and can’t wait to hang out.  We also have some fun stuff planned to make your time in Austin better.  Stay tuned for more details!

Funding, Worldwide Launch, and SXSW

Phew. Things have been moving fast since we launched Highlight a month ago. It’s been so exciting to see the app in the wild and to hear about your experiences with it. People are getting notified when friends are around the corner, using it to remember people’s names, and seeing random hidden connections wherever they go. We used to imagine these things when we first started building the app, and now they are actually happening. It’s really exciting.

We’ve been hard at work this past month and today we’re happy to share a few announcements with you:

Funding.  Now that we have the paperwork in order, we can officially say that we’ve closed a round of funding.  Benchmark Capital led the investment, with participation from SV Angel, Crunchfund, and a great group of angel investors. They have all been incredibly helpful and we’re really excited to have them be a part of things as we work towards the big vision we have.

Worldwide launch.  Until now Highlight has only been available in the U.S., but starting today it is available worldwide in the App Store. With Highlight in more countries, we think there is very real potential to change how we travel and to create meaningful connections across borders. Imagine being in a cafe in Iceland and discovering that the person next to you knows your sister, or backpacking in Thailand and seeing friends of friends all around you. We can’t wait to hear the stories that come in.

SXSW!  We’re also in the process of getting a new version of Highlight ready in time for SXSW.  We want Highlight to make Austin even more fun for you - by surprising you with hidden connections, surfacing information about the people you meet, and helping you remember these people when you bump into them at a random New York coffee shop a year later.  You can expect to see some useful enhancements to search and discovery, new ways to interact with people, and continued improvements to performance and battery life.

We’ll be on the ground in Austin from March 8-14th and would love to meet as many of you as possible.  Look for lots of neon colors and the Highlight street team around the show. We have some fun things planned for everyone, so please make sure you install the latest updates to find out about them.

Stay tuned for more details in the coming week!

Introducing Highlight

We’re really excited to announce the launch of Highlight, available for free in the iPhone app store.
 
Highlight is a simple, passive app that helps you learn more about the people around you.

If someone standing near you also has Highlight, their profile will show up on your phone. You can see their name, photos of them, mutual friends, and anything else they have chosen to share. When you meet someone, Highlight helps you see what you have in common with them. And when you forget their name at a party a week later, Highlight helps you remember it.
 
As you go about your day, Highlight runs quietly in the background, surfacing information about the people around you. If your friends are nearby, it will notify you. If someone interesting crosses your path, it will tell you more about them.

We are just getting started with Highlight and there is so much that we are still figuring out, but the experience we’ve had with our beta has been really exciting. Knowing more about the people around you makes life more fun. People talk more, they see more hidden connections, bump into friends more often, and remember more details about each other. It’s like having a sixth sense that you didn’t have before.
 
We’re thrilled to be opening Highlight up more broadly today and we’d love for you to let us know what you think. You can reach us anytime via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
 
You can learn more about Highlight and download it in the app store here.