By Chris Morrison
The first app spawned from the launch of Facebook Places is out today: InCrowd, a location-based iPhone game by MyTown creator Booyah.
InCrowd was created by Booyah in under a month, but that doesn’t mean the new game isn’t interesting. Using art from its Facebook game, Nightclub City, Booyah gives players customizable avatars that they can use to virtually interact with each other in their real-life location.
“We stepped back and said hey, we don’t want to just federate check-ins, we want a brand new experience and brand-new app,” says Booyah CEO Keith Lee. “We’re trying to push the envelope in terms of how we can create new experiences or new gameplay based on location.”
For now, InCrowd is pretty simple; Lee compares it to poke apps in the early days of social networking. Users can interact with other people in their location with actions like hi-fives or dropkicks, which are immediately sent to their friend in the app and on Facebook. “One of the things that has been missing on Facebook is real-time social interaction,” says Lee.
Over time, poke apps evolved point systems and a sort of light gaming element (the Vampire series being perhaps the penultimate example). InCrowd is starting out with a similar system. The hi-five, for example, will add popularity points to the receiving user, while the dropkick will take points away.
InCrowd isn’t just a one-off experiment; Booyah will add to it progressively over time. One upcoming feature is customized virtual spaces for different locations, so that a 
particular baseball park or store is identifiable as the actual location. The store might even include a non-player character to guide or give information about the store. The virtual item system from Nightclub City might also migrate over in some form.
“What we’re really trying to do is build a hub and platform,” says Lee. “It’s a lot more elegant than a boring check-in app that just has a pop-up coupon.”
The key to the future is in how players use the new app, though. Lee expects a younger audience for InCrowd. “You’ll start to see some really interesting use-cases. Imagine how people in high school or college would use it,” he says. “You have a sense people are from your dorm but you may not know them, so you have a new way of interacting with them.”
Less trafficked places could experience another kind of interesting user behavior, Lee speculates. Since the app will show the last 30 or so check-ins, a place that isn’t visited much could allow asynchronous interaction and discovery of new people. “Besides checking into your office, maybe you check-in to an antique bookstore… in places that aren’t frequented as much, you want to find people who are similar.”
It also remains to be seen how many new users Places will bring to Booyah, which already has over three million users with MyTown, but Lee expects a significant number to appear due to increased virality in the feed.
