On Facebook, we hit “like” or craft a pithy comment and the interaction ends. But Allen Romero, middle, is rebelling. He recently launched Hang Local, a platform that lets people pick out the Facebook friends they’d like to do stuff with offline. The user shares when they’re available for social activities like meeting for drinks or going on a run. That select group of friends will get notified and ideally connect. Allen grew up in McLean, Va., and worked at Microstrategy in 1999 before moving to California.
Nowadays Allen, hanging out in Venice Beach, splits his time between San Francisco and LA. He worked at Google for six years and was on the team that launched Google AdSense online. While he loves technology, he’s concerned people are missing out on connecting in person, which inspired him to launch the app. An iOS version will come out this month and he has a plan for making money down the road. Local merchants could advertise their services and people could pay for local tour guides in various cities through the app. Allen also says this video, making the rounds on what else… social media, just proves that people, not just Americans, are getting sick of living just online. (This doesn't mean you should print Bisnow and hand deliver it to your friends.)
