Highlight, the It Girl of last year’s South by South West Interactive conference, is playing catch up this year, unrolling today photo filters and a map view that shows users where social contacts are checked in.
“We hope you’re finding Highlight getting richer and more useful with each release,” the company said in a blog post.
Highlight is a social discovery app, which points users to people near them with whom they share interests or social contacts through another social network. Unlike social networking apps, social discovery apps aims to connect people who don’t already know each other.
The update debuts four basic photo filters and smooths the process of sharing photos from the device’s camera roll and downloading photos from the app to the camera roll. The ability to post photos was first introduced in the app’s first major update a couple of weeks ago.
Since Instagram has become so popular, Twitter, Flickr and Viddy have launched photo filters. (Both Twitter and Flickr use code licensed by Aviary.)
The update also includes a map view that allows users to see where social contacts and Highlight events are taking place near them. The map is accessible from the app’s main feed. Highlight competitor, Banjo, was the first major player to bring social discovery to a map view. But in recent weeks, both Yelp and Foursquare have introduced the feature.
The update is available for iOS. Highlight says it will be available on Android operating systems “very soon.”
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The location-based social app Banjo launched version 3.0 today, rolling out new features including a Facebook-like news feed, access to second-degree social connections and a list of places where connections are currently active. 
