What is Shaker?

Shaker is a brand new application you access from Facebook that lets you socialize on Facebook the way you do hanging out in real life — all in real time in a virtual setting. Your Facebook profile comes along with you to help you get around and share things with your friends and to help you make new ones.

Access the Shaker app from Facebook. You first decide how much you want to share by defining your online personality as follows: Shy – you only share your basic profile information and profile picture, Normal – you share those things plus photos you are tagged in, and Friendly – you share all those things plus your albums as well. Decide how friendly you want to be, then the music starts and you are granted access to the loft bar.

In the loft bar, your virtual self (your profile picture is posted over your head) gets to hang out with others in real time. People you know have their profile pictures outlined in blue, friends of friends in yellow, and the others are in gray. Send invites to your friends who aren’t using the app so you have more people you know to play with, or just concentrate on those already hanging out. Click on the box at the bottom to see who is in the loft, and where they are. Then you can open the chat window and find out more about them from their Facebook profile, or send them a message. Your virtual person can also dance along to the groovy music, and buy and receive virtual drinks.

At first, I thought this app would be great for college age and single people looking to meet someone, but as it’s just getting going who knows where it will lead and how people will end of using it. Shaker is fun to use and I’m sure new features will be added continually. I have to admit, it was pretty great when a cute fellow user brought me a virtual cocktail. *Sigh*.

What do you think of this technology? Do you think Shaker will catch on?