Banjo is a unique app that aims to combine the experiences of all the popular social networks. This app is perfect for people who are constantly engaged in social networks. It will primarily benefit those who are looking for a new way to browse familiar services.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

This app is designed to make typical social networks more location-based. It is designed to be portal to browse news, photos, and people based on locations that interest you.

The following is a short demo video of Banjo:

Pros

• Integrates Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare and LinkedIn
• Find interesting locations by keyword and according to your interests
• Search any location in the world
• Notifications when friends are nearby
• Can see where your friends are based on posts and check-ins

Cons

• Frequent crashes
• Strangers show up in locations

Discussion

Banjo is a unique application that aims to refresh how people interact with their favorite social networks. Instead of getting a simple news feed, all of your content is organized by location. This means you browse by location, rather by specific friends. If you click on a location that interests you, you will be presented with people who are at this location. This is determined when a person posts from that location in Facebook, checks-in on Foursquare, etc. The downside is that it will display friends of friends in that location. This means you will see people you do not know. Honestly, this is incredibly weird and it keeps you from finding out information about the friends you really care about.

How you find locations to browse is based entirely on you. Naturally, the more friends you have in one location, the more apt you are to browse it. However, you can search locations by keywords such as “ocean” or “mountains”. Additionally, you can literally type in any location in the entire world, and if one of your friends is there, you will know about it. You will also see content such as posts and pictures that your friend is making from the location. This allows you to get a good idea of how that particular place is or if your friend likes it.

You can also set the application up to notify you when your friends are nearby. This of course will only happen if the friends privacy settings allow it. It can be a useful feature for those who have difficulty keeping up with your friends’ locations. Unfortunately, this notification system, combined with normal app use, causes the app to crash a lot. This can be incredibly frustrating and will probably preventing you from using the app smoothly.

Conclusion and download link

Overall, this app can really add a unique twist to typical social networks. Unfortunately,  the fact that you are put in touch with people you do not know makes this app too weird for me to recommend. However, if you are able to tweak the app so you only primarily follow people you know, then this app could really be fantastic.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 3.0.1

Requires: Android 2.2 and up

Download size: 7mb

Banjo on Play Store