SNAP has launched it’s first iPhone application, based on it’s popular Facebook Platform dating app ‘Are You Interested?’, which presently has more than 12 million users. SNAP’s new iPhone app allows users to:

• Browse photos of singles in their area and tap “Yes” on people they like
• View their “Matches” and find out who likes them Check out the “Buzz” and meet singles in their area who are online right now
• Contact singles: send and receive winks and messages

I downloaded the app and was prompted for my username and password when I said that I have an existing account. I’ve used AYI on Facebook forever, but what is my username and password? Is it specific to the recently updated Are You Interested website or is it my Facebook login? At areyouinterested.com I see the Facebook Connect login option, which I click. Oops, it’s asking me for my email, password, name, username and birthday. This is so annoying I almost screamed. Ok, too much caffeine today but still, the idea behind Facebook Connect is to make signing up for a site easy. There is a difference between registering and logging in with Facebook Connect and this is the first time I’ve seen it as a registration option which ignores all of my Facebook data. Not great but moving on.

Now there is another screen asking for my country, city gender and if I have an iphone. Why the heck isn’t it pulling at least some of this information from Facebook? Is this not possible?

One thing I’ve learned about Facebook applications is not to shoot the messenger, so to speak. Facebook does crazy things with their API’s weekly and frequently break things. This is also SNAP’s first iPhone app so we’ll try to cut them some slack. That said, they really should have let me beta test it first. Read on and you’ll see why.

Now I’m asked to upload a photo via the website in order to show up in search results. Bravo! This is fantastic, no more “user does not have a photo” problems. But wait, I tried to upload a photo, the status bar froze and I don’t know what to do now. Clicking register again doesn’t do anything, there is no alert helping me figure out my next move. I can’t even go back to the home page. Fail.

I went back to the iPhone application and was able to log in successfully, phew. It seems like the default search says I am seeking males between 38 and 47 but perhaps it’s females and I’m not paying attention? I like the ladies under 40, just saying.

The initial iPhone help screen is a nice touch. The application features five buttons, should be simple enough. Now it’s asking me to upload a photo. But there is no button to click to upload a photo. The registration and photo upload process clearly didn’t get the attention is deserves.

Now I am asked to fill out a bunch of profile fields on the phone. I guess these are the fields that never made it from the website. But I can’t fill them out. I click on (null) for my age and the screen goes blank. Do people even know what null means?

Somehow I get to my profile and am able to change my gender. I decide to cut my losses and restart the application.

I’m greeted by an image of an appropriately-aged female from nearby, hooray, after a kludgy beginning, things are starting to look up.

Clicking on people spins the image around, making it feel like the person’s information is written on the back of the photo. Very Apple, slick.

the filter doesn’t allow me to search around Boston, I’m getting Cheeseheads from Wisconsin.

I clicked next on a cutie and now she’s gone, where is the back button? Of course there is none, they want you to keep clicking. Frustrating but it’s all about the pageviews.

The browse feature is just as it says. You can say Yes or Skip, that’s it. Clicking Buzz displays a chronological list of member status updates. I wish this displayed my Facebook status. Strange that most of the status messages are “Username logged in” right news to text that says “Online Now”, straight from the redundancy department redundancy.

I was trying to figure out how to send someone message. You have to go to thex Connections window, then select Send Message or Send Wink. Not being able to do this from the Browse window is a serious bummer. why not add the buttons in the Browse window.

Connections window has My Likes, Likes Me and Matches. Pressing the buttons is difficult with my wide fingers

The Write a Message feature let’s me compose a message to any combination of My Likes, LikesMe and Matches. Sending default canned messages to groups of people is boring. Why can’t I personalize the message? The ability to write a custom message is available from Buzz:select person:Click Send Message. I’m kind of confused now. Figuring out the specific contexts in which I can perform certain actions is difficult for all applications at first, usually gets easier after using an app for a few days.

Messages window shows my Inbox, Sent and Winks. Business as usual.

I’ve clicked around the few dozen women who have installed the application. At this point I can safely say that I while I prefer the iPhone version over the Facebook application by about 1,000% in terms of simplicity. The Facebook app, with at least 23 actionable links on the front page, has become overcrowded with ads, leaderboards and ways to earn points. But finding the app on my iPhone takes a while (50+ apps installed and no easy way to rearrange them) and I’m at my computer more than out with my phone. It’s also easier to click the multiple emails I receive from AYI each day.

Will the AYI application send me an SMS each time someone winks at me? Will those winks show up in the Facebook application? It appears that nothing I do on the iPhone app shows up in my Facebook stream. Lost opportunity if that’s the case.

Then again, SNAP doesn’t want all their eggs in the social networking basked. That’s probably why they ask for so much information on the website.

The price needs to be 99 cents and much more viral for it to really take off. My guess is that that more people will pay for the mobile version of Are You Interested if SNAP adds location-based services to enable people to perform local search and connections.

It will be interesting to see how Zoosk and Skout respond. Will Skout copy the HotorNot features of both Zoosk and Are You Interested, creating a BrightKite/Loopt/AYI/HotorNot mashup? We’ll see, these social/dating/mobile hybrids are fascinating to explore, especially since no one has created the killer app, yet.

SNAP anticipates revenue in excess of $1.08 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2008, and total revenue in excess of $3.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2008. Not bad for a fledgling social networking application developer cutting it’s teeth on iPhone development at the same time.

Download Are You Interested at iTunes now while it’s free, they’ll start charing for the application in a few days.

Updates:

I can log into the website with Facebook connect now.

The beta Are You Interested site is much cleaner than the Facebook application. It can update your Facebook status but not bidirectionally AFAIK.

The website has three buttons at the top of each photo: Yes, No and Yes (but don’t tell). What does that mean?

Add FourSquare to the mobile/social apps http://tinyurl.com/cns5pt