Never Lose Your Mates At A Festival Again Thanks To This App
Even overloaded telephone networks can't bring it down.
Trying to keep in touch with a bunch of mates at a music festival is a special kind of hell.
You’ve got overloaded networks rendering your phone practically useless, so if one of your buddies doesn’t meet up at the right spot at exactly the right time, you’re stuffed. Is there anything worse than spending valuable dancing time wandering around in ever-more frustrating circles, uselessly dialling a number that won’t connect? The impending heat-death of our planet, sure, but you get my drift.
The look you give your friend from across the festival grounds after you've been lost for a few hours. pic.twitter.com/I6WBZsyzYM
— Grayson Gregory (@Grayson_Gregory) March 30, 2019
A couple of Aussies wanted to change this, so they made an app, as you do. SearchParty basically aims to keep festivalgoers connected at all times through a free, unique, messaging and alert service.
SearchParty is low-latency — which means it can operate on limited network support — so even if Telstra or Optus or Voda is overloaded you can still send messages to see what stage you’re meant to be meeting in front of.
Better still, SearchParty lets you to add your friends to a map so you can actually find them, rather than shouting “hey!” to literal crowds of people wearing the exact same shirt as your mate.
There’s also a pretty cool safety feature built into the app. The alert function lets you hit a single button that immediately sends out a message to your friends, alerting them of any kind of emergency situation you might be in. It geo-tags the location of the distress signal, too, so they know exactly where you are.
SearchParty launched in March, and is now available across the Apple store for free, with an Android version hitting the market sometime this month.