Bing’s “We’re In” App For Windows Phones Shares Your Location With Friends In Real Time–Privately and Limited

Microsoft is rolling out a Google Latitude-type competitor and the first app is for Windows Phones (for once). We’re In let’s you share your location with a set group of friends and for a short period of time. So instead of blasting your location for the world 24/7 this is really geared towards meeting up at the same time and location. Here’s the brief description:

•Create a get-together invite for a group of friends
•See where your friends are
•Share your location with your friends in real time
•Control your privacy – your location is only shared with the group of invitees, only for a short time slot

Android and iPhone apps are in the works and let’s hope that a Mango version works in the background. Here’s their full description:

We’re In makes organizing get- together’s, carpooling and trying to find people in a crowd a breeze. Any time you want to see where your friends are—We’re In can help you. It’s simple, invite your friends, and when they join, they’ll see your location and you’ll see theirs. When the invite expires, so does the shared location – no complicated process to worry about.

We’re In is a great way to save time and frustration when planning your roadtrip or meeting your friend at the mall – helping you connect with your friend faster. Let’s take a closer look at the new We’re In product features and how they work.

We’ve made We’re In super simple to use – all you need is your phone number to sign up. Simply invite your friends (via your contacts) to start sharing location info with each other including who, why, and how long:

Pick your friends from the contact list or enter their phone number, tell them what the plan is. At this point you can choose how long you want to share location info.

Your friends receive a text message with these details. They can use the app to join you or, for friends that don’t have a Windows Phone, they can join from the mobile website via the invite.

Seeing your friends on the map

As each of your friends joins you, their locations appear on the map. If you need to you can pan, pinch and stretch the map to see more or fewer of them. Everyone that joins can see everyone else’s location.

You can also update your status message to let your friends know what’s going on (you’re on your way, you’re going to be late, the first round has just arrived, important stuff they need to know). To see someone’s most recent status message, just tap their user tile on the map. To see status messages for everyone that’s joined, go to the People tab.

To stop sharing your location info at any time, just tap "leave" on the People tab. If you want, you can send them a status message to let them know that you’re leaving.

And when the time is up, the invite expires and location sharing stops. You don’t need to do anything.