Picture this: a young woman goes to a party. She doesn't know anyone but it's fine because she has her mobile with her. A few clicks and she accesses the profiles of a dozen people at the party, including their pictures. She's in luck: two of them turn out to be friends of friends. She messages them and they start to chat.

Or this: an entrepreneur is at a conference. He is on the lookout for a new marketing director. Within minutes he has identified ten people in the hall with the right CV, two of whom are looking to change jobs. His mobile tells him one of them is standing 20ft away. That evening, a record of all the people he has met is automatically displayed with their profiles on his home computer.

This is not science fiction - it is the future of social networking and it is just around the corner. After the explosion in internet-based social networking (MySpace, Facebook) doing the same thing in real life instead of in front of a computer became an obvious next step. Much of it is already happening on a small scale as dozens of companies seek to exploit social networking on the go.

So how does it work? The key is the coming together of internet-connected mobile phones and location or proximity technology.

You can browse the internet quickly and easily on most new phones. Phones know where they are, thanks to in-built GPS satellite technology or triangulation from mobile phone masts. They can then tell if other phones are in the same area. Bluetooth short-range radio technology is also standard on most mobiles and with this phones can pick up the presence of other Bluetooth-enabled phones within about 20 metres.

Effectively, by linking these two developments, your phone can tell if someone is near you and can access lots of information about them - the perfect ingredients for real social interaction.

The possibilities are endless. Can't ever put names to faces? Want to check the background of that chief executive officer so you can remind him that he owes you a favour? Want to avoid all accountants/lawyers/journalists? Keep seeing that handsome man at the bar and need a common interest to get the ball rolling? All these scenarios are being solved by the new wave of mobile applications.

One company based in Berlin has just gone live with its mobile social network. More than 3,000 young Germans have signed up to the aka-aki service in just over a month.

Users of the service download an application on to their mobile phones free. The software uses Bluetooth, and when another member's phone comes within range, it pings. The user can then check who it is and choose to access that person's profile, message them and, if they want, go over and have a chat.

In just over an hour on a sunny day in the centre of Berlin I had more than a dozen “encounters” with aka-aki members. Everyone was buzzing with the possibilities of the network and eager to chat.

Stefanie Hoffman, 30, one of aka-aki's founders, said that although she met her boyfriend through aka-aki it was not just about dating. “The business applications are real,” she said. “I went to a conference the other day - one girl and 80 guys - and normally I would feel very reluctant to go up to someone to talk. It can be very difficult if you are a woman in those circumstances. But my phone told me there were half a dozen aka-aki members there and so I could introduce myself.”

That privileged sense of belonging is both the key to the success of mobile social networking and the greatest barrier. People will want to join because they can be part of a connected community. But until enough people join, these mobile networks will not take off. It is probably going to take one of the big beasts of internet social networks such as Facebook, which already has many millions of members, to achieve this.

The other big question mark is privacy. Why would people want total strangers to have access to their details?

In the Mitte district of Berlin, Sehnaz Sensan, 27, a student and aka-aki member, was unconcerned. After I had messaged her to ask if we could talk, she said that she “encountered” mainly men (the ratio for men and women signing up for aka-aki is about 70/30 - early adopters of new technology tend to be young men). “I can control what is on my profile and what people can know about me,” she said. “They message me to say hello and I can message back and we can meet up or I can ignore it. It is a way of breaking the ice.”

What about being bothered by strangers? “Men can come up to you anyway without knowing anything about you,” Ms Sensan said. “That's much more insulting. If I don't want an encounter then I don't switch it on.”

Michael Arrington, one of the most influential technology bloggers in the world, says that the days when people are not happy to broadcast their CV/personal life electronically are over. “People always trade off privacy for removal of friction,” he said.

As he notes on his TechCrunch blog there are more than a dozen mobile social network start-ups in Silicon Valley. “A few years from now we will use our mobile devices to help us to remember details of people we know. It will help us to meet new people for dating, business and friendship. Using your phone to create or enhance real world interactions is a killer application, but no one has cracked the nut yet. Once it happens, look out.”

Arrington has blogged that Apple's hugely successful iPhone would be a great place to start. He has seen an “awesome” application being developed and says that iPhone users are the perfect group for a mobile social network - they are technological, elitist and identify with their brand.

Analysts and commentators are predicting huge growth in the sector. Aka-aki, which was developed from a university diploma project, now has serious funding from a leading German venture capitalist.

It is not difficult to see how networks like aka-aki might make money. Anyone who has watched the film Minority Report with Tom Cruise will have seen how shops could message those on the network with offers when they pass by.

In another scenario, businesses such as restaurants could pay to access the service and when a member walks in, the store's profile appears. The member chooses to add the restaurant to a list of favoured brands and the next week receives a two-for-one meal offer. The restaurant gets targeted “permission” advertising and more diners on a slow night.

But in the end are mobile social networks not just a nerdy replacement for people simply talking to each other? As one blogger put it: “I am pretty sure that an actual conversation will do the same thing. Is this the evolution of geek dating?”

Roman Hansler, another aka-aki co-founder, says that seeing other people's details on your mobile in real life is a conversation-starter not a replacement. “This is about opening doors for real communication, not sitting in a virtual chat room,” he said.

www.aka-aki.com

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