Mnation : Location Based Social Networking

We have been seeing different web sites that would allow us to do cool things with our cell phones, but usually with more expensive smart phones. However, recently we came across mnation.co that allows anyone with a cell phone to enjoy great facilities:

1. Mobile chat with friends and people who are closeby,
2. Find locations and people who are close by,
3. Allow you to announce to your friends that you are at a certain location,
4. See your friends' locations on a map (if they allow you).

So we set out to review this app and check what was possible. The site is only accessible from a cell phone - so accessing it via a laptop takes us to the landing page (looks full of energy) which asks us to login with a cell phone. The desktop landing page is just that, it does not give a whole lot of information but just asks visitors to log in via their cell phone.

The site loads up quickly on the phone, and offers a short introduction to mnation and sign up possibility as well as logging in via email address or cell number. It is also possible to sign up via facebook, which we did as it takes only two clicks. On the other hand, the registration page allows us to choose a nickname and upload a picture. This is one of the few sites that still allows users to have a nickname.

So we login and see there are basically four areas of what is available.

1. I can add my name and my city name. If I click on the city name, I can see all the locations that are closeby, do a search and see the ratings of the location and where it is on a map.
2. There is a check-ins link, where I can see the places where I have announced as my location and on that basis I can collect points. The possibility to announce and rate only appears if I am in under certain distance of the location.
3. It is possible to write a message and "shout" - which goes out to all my friends.
4. There's friend area which shows my friend activity and clicking on it takes me to a list of all my friends, I can search for them and chat with them or see where they are. The "Add friends” area has a "Google" and "Yahoo" button on top - and I can invite my friends from Google and Yahoo to mnation.co also. Since I have logged in with Facebook, I see a "My Facebook friends" link - here I see a full list of all my friends from Facebook and I can send them invitations to join mnation - pretty good going so far.
5. Now to the most popular part of the site I am told. "People nearby" - here you can see all the people who are closeby to you and search for them by interest, gender and age. The search results come back with a picture also :) And you can start chatting with someone you like by hitting the "chat" button. I found almost 10,000 people close by when I logged on.

Browsing around a bit more, I saw the "Profile" link on the footer, here I could edit my picture, change my password, edit interests and most interestingly, change who sees what on my profile. I could choose who sees my real name or picture and if I didn't want to be available for chat.

All in all I think its an interesting site, which seems to be catching on locally. A little rough around the edges - consistent messages around the site would be great. But guess what - feel free to login and send feedback to the site owner from the footer also.