If you haven’t heard of “ambient social networking” yet, get ready, because it’s quickly becoming a trend. The concept is also known as social discovery and, essentially, it takes the idea of check-in services a little further. These new location-based apps run silently behind the scenes on users’ mobile devices and notify them when other users they know enter the same vicinity.

Highlight is one app that does this and, although the space is still young, it is already emerging as a leader. WebProNews spoke with its Founder and CEO Paul Davison who told us that the concept would change the way people interact in the future.

As he explained, users have been actively sharing information about themselves for quite sometime. However, with apps like Highlight, this information is shared passively, which he believes will have a “profound impact” on social networking going forward.

While these apps are gaining a lot of attention, they’ve also been raising some concerns over the creepy factor of the trend. Davison told us that this reaction was to be expected with any new form of technology. In fact, he said if users didn’t raise concerns, as they had with Facebook and other new concepts, he would be worried that it wouldn’t succeed.

What do you think of ambient social networking? Have you embraced it yet? We’d love to know.