Design Decision: Adding Friends

Sierra brought up an interesting point today: it seems like Cluster has no way to add a new friend. This is both true and not true, by design.

First, how Cluster does NOT support adding friends:
Cluster is an aggregator. It consumes social-networking information that is hosted elsewhere (facebook, google calendar, etc.) and presents it with location information in a portable phone interface. We're assuming that everyone has a nice friendly API that allows Cluster to be immediately synched with any social-networking service. So if you add a friend on facebook or in your phone's contact list, Cluster knows it right away. Cluster itself claims no responsibility to this type of information. Only "place" information is actually housed within Cluster. So if you meet someone on the street whom you'd like to add as a friend in Cluster, just add their information into your phone's regular contact module or friend them on Myspace (from your phone's web browser, perhaps?) and Cluster will figure out the rest.

Second, how Cluster DOES support adding friends:
Cluster is a portal into all of your own social-networking identities. You can manage your calendar, your facebook, your buddy list, and any other social-networking paradigm you might have from within the app. So if you meet someone on the street, you can use Cluster to access your own facebook account and friend them right away. Technically you're "in" Cluster while you're doing this, though you're just using it to get to an outside service.

Either way you do it, Cluster sees your new friend. Nifty, huh?