Note: No generative AI was used to create this blog post.
Last Friday, a new social networking app was released for Apple Vision Pro! According to the VisionOS app’s information page, it’s called AuraTap, a project developed by Phil Traut and Artur Sychov.
What’s even more interesting is that it leverages the sometimes eerily accurate spatial persona feature in the VisionOS operating system that comes standard with AVP, as seen in this promotional YouTube video.
Fellow AVP enthusiast Justin Ryan posted this video on LinkedIn with the following caption:
Meet new people in Apple Vision Pro. interview. 2 minutes. That’s the idea behind our new app, AuraTap.
If you’re in a mutual mood, move on. If not, move on to the next step.
I love how quickly you can meet people, make connections, and explore each other’s profiles.
It also has one of the most beautiful UX designs I’ve tried in VisionOS. Everything feels incredibly stylish.
The app launches on Friday March 27th.
We’re hosting an in-app launch party this Friday at 1PM PDT. I hope you can do it.
To give you an idea of what the app looks like, here are a few more screen captures I took this morning. Now, obviously this is a very new app and the target audience of Apple Vision Pro users is still quite small, to be honest. Still, it’s rather impressive that 238 users have already signed up since last Friday (Yes, I set up my profile too, why doesn’t it work?).
In fact, AuraTap is so new that you haven’t had the opportunity to do much more than set up a profile and browse other users’ profiles! The idea is that you can connect with other AVP users online and have a quick chat (at least when I think Yes). I mean, it’s definitely for professional networking, but it also gives it a speed dating vibe, lol! So perhaps, like many social networking sites before it, it will be up to the user to decide what they want to use it for.
And if the name of one of the developers, Artur Sychov, rings a bell to my regular readers, it’s because he is one of the developers of a social VR program called Somnium Space, which I write about on my blog (you can see all my blog posts about Somnium Space here). One thing I can say about Artur is that he seems to be involved in many different projects! In addition to Somnium Space and now AuraTap, he is developing his own virtual reality headset called Somnium VR1.
It’s an exciting development, and I’m looking forward to testing it out with InSpaze (who I’ve written about on my blog several times before) and meeting new people! Because the product is so new, it doesn’t appear to have a website yet, but if I find one I’ll update this blog post to add it. And if you already own Apple Vision Pro, you can find this free program by searching for “AuraTap” in the App Store.
Update 3:25 p.m.: The AuraTap website is now live! According to the website description, it works as follows.
Meet your persona: Have you never met them before? Here is your opportunity. We’ll randomly match you with a new person, and you can decide if you’re a match in under 5 minutes. When you both tap to connect, the timer goes away and you’re permanently connected, so you can find each other in your contacts at any time.
Point your finger: here’s the problem. The other person won’t know that you tapped to connect. So do your best. I hope they stay in touch too. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed!
Stay connected. This is the address book you’ve always wanted. It’s a place where you can rediscover past connections and spark new ones. See who’s online, invite them for a quick chat, or find business cards through social media and more. This isn’t just networking, this is the future of networking.
To me, this app sounds a bit strange, more like a dating app than a professional networking app. But I think that would be kind of fun too. As far as I know, the biggest difference between AuraTap and InSpaze is that all connections are one-to-one, as opposed to group meetings of up to 8 people (which is of course the random aspect of AuraTap). Maybe Artur and Phil are onto something. I’d love to know what inspired the design of this particular app!
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