Today sees the launch of Sparks, a new app designed to help you connect with and meet new people nearby with whom you have shared interests.

Sparks is a ‘local social’ network that helps you to maximise your awareness of who is around you and what they’re talking about. Sparks makes it easy for you to share your thoughts and photos and make new connections with other people around you. Sparks also makes it easy to maintain the connections you've made locally wherever you are.

Sparks has already seen an astonishing level of interest in the market, not least from Asia, where it has received a sizable number of pre-registrations – and that is before the product has been formally launched!

Sparks gives you more freedom to discover who’s around, follow profiles and like content, hold 1-2-1 chats and broadcast to some or all – even to Facebook – with a single post… and all without the bother of in-app advertising.

Paul Shetler, CEO of Paragon Proximates Ltd., creators of Sparks, states: “We designed Sparks because we wanted to use something more personal and more connected with our lives and neighbourhoods than the increasingly noisy and impersonal global social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

“Sparks users will notice that the content they see changes as they move around town or around the world: everything the user is looking at is local and in real time. They can see what is happening around them at that very moment and interact with users based on shared interests and experiences.

“Sparks is about discovering new people who you might otherwise have passed by. It has been developed to broaden your social life, enabling you to meet new friends and associates who share the same interests in life as you,” he added.

Referring to the technology platform behind the app, Paul said: “Sparks has a cutting edge design that takes full advantage of the possibilities available through iOS to provide immersive experiences to its users. This design goes further than native iOS capabilities: we have created a split-screen interface with drag and drop content selection. This unique design sets Sparks apart from a myriad of me-too applications available in the market.”

With Sparks, users can:

· View up to 300 users’ profiles in the Discovery Grid

· Chat to other users privately, for free

· Follow other Sparks users to find them again quickly

· Stay up-to-date with friends and followers on the Discovery Stream

· Free and unlimited sharing of photos and updates on Sparks - and out to Facebook

· Easily share private photos and videos in chat – with unlimited messaging

· Choose who sees photos and videos in your Private Gallery

Sparks is free and available to download on the iTunes App Store now at: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id566516951

About Sparks

Launched in November 2012, Sparks is the social discovery app for meeting new people. If you love social networking on the go, Sparks helps you find the right people, when and where you want to meet them.

Sparks is a 'local social' app - the content you see changes as you move around town or the world. Sparks also makes it easy to maintain the connections you've made locally wherever you are.

It is designed to take the growing social discovery market to the next level by allowing users to get more connected with their lives and neighbourhoods and away from the increasingly noisy and impersonal global social networks.

With drag and drop icons and a unique customisable split-screen interface that lets you do two things at once, Sparks creates a fully immersive social experience like never before.

Discover new people nearby, stay connected globally and share the best of yourself in Sparks, the app that puts you in the spotlight.