Dodgeball: Text Your Location To Friends 227
iseff writes "I was listening to NPR yesterday in the car and they ran a piece about this new service called Dodgeball. It's essentially a social networking site, except it's based pretty extensively on text messaging. When you go out for the night, you txt the main dodgeball server your location. It then txt's your friends where you are so they can meet you. It can also tell you who is close-by where you are and how you are connected to those people. It seems like a more 'sticky' and applicable use for social networking when compared to Friendster or orkut (which are always very popular when they launch and then quickly fade). Could this maybe be a decent use to social networking that will last? Or will this bust just as fast?"
Have we really gotten that lazy... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometimes I even turn my phone off when I am out somewhere. It's no fun to always feel like you're pinned down by technology. These days no one gets to unplug and have time to themselves because no matter where you are there are 5 ways to get ahold of you.
Just my 2 cents.
Re:Ring them? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, when there's 2-3 of you regulraly going out it's easy to coordinate. Once you have 20-30 people in a group of friends, some of which are coming out on a given night, and some which aren't then it gets extremely tedious to:
a) Invite that many people to begin with and not forget anyone.
b) Keep track of who's coming out that night and who isn't.
c) Continually update people who haven't yet arrived as to where you are right now.
How does the site make money? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why Silicon Valley VCs keep fucking up left, right and center. They can't seem to figure out that a business has to make money, regardless of the technology in question.
Re:Your Guide to Comments on This Story (Score:2, Insightful)
Step 6:
Cue some arrogant twit who takes the time and energy to sum up "typical" comments, not realizing that by doing so he is engaging in the same predictable behaviour that he is speaking of.
Possible uses on the "scene" (Score:1, Insightful)
But I can see this holding some appeal for people with large acquaintance networks who like to bar-hop. It's always fun to run into people you know (assuming you like those people, at any rate) when you're out on the town. Certainly easier than calling twenty plus people to find out if they're within a few blocks.
Potential for Annoyance: 100% (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the Primate Adolescent Elimination Program. (Score:5, Insightful)
Adolescent primates try out new things and see how they work. (Typically one of the things they try is breaking one major taboo.)
Sometimes it works out very well. Then they are wildly successful and teach the rest of the primates (starting with their family and cronies) about a new food source, technique, etc.
Sometimes it's a disaster. Then they die.
Most of the time it's just interesting to them and maybe fun for a while, then it gets old and gets dropped.
Adolescence is the right time for this sort of behavior. Adolescents are mature enough that they're not likely to fail just through lack of strength, knowldege or skill. But less of the rest of the tribe's resources are sunk by their loss, and their loss is less damaging to the tribe's future, than if they pull this and lose later in life, say once they have young to raise and others who have become dependent on them. Thus do post-adolescents become more conservative, and less experimental and risk-taking, once they have accepted major long-term responsibilities.
Big Brother is Tracking You. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe the fun is worth it. Maybe not. But if you subscribe, you might want to be careful about who your friends are. If they screw up with the law, the law might just decide you're a gang member, vandal, or terrorist. B-(
Re:Potential for Annoyance: 100% (Score:3, Insightful)
"It would only take one overly extroverted person to annoy dozens of normal people."
With a name like "Dodgeball", you ought to be able to strike them with something if you want them out of the network.
geolocation is augmented reality's killer app. (Score:4, Insightful)
Caveat emptor: Augmented reality does not yet exist in a workable fashion (but it's getting there.)
Combine one of these: http://eyetap.org/
with a geolocation service, and you could do things like, looking at a building and gathering information about its ammenities, contact information (a phone number, a Zagatsurvey rating, etc) and also a list of who, on your contact list, may be inside/in the proximity.
a kind of personal tracking sort of thing.
Spam (Score:1, Insightful)
Dodgeball? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence the name "dodgeball."
Re:Have we really gotten that lazy... (Score:4, Insightful)
You talk about lazy, then immediately mention the telephone, a device used for long distance communication. You could just as easily write a letter to tell your friends, or call it out in the public square. Different technologies add ease - telephone is easier than a letter (or trekking across town when you really want to meet your friend in the middle). This is easier than calling up 40 friends.
Just because a technology is old doesn't mean it's any better, and just because it's new, it doesn't mean it sucks.
Re:Ring them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, you get the fun of reviewing your conversations in your stored messages the next day.
"Did I really say that!? Shit!" -- Any given weekend
In more than one way (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Most of these "social networks" are based on the fundamentally _false_ assumption that if A is a friend of B, and B is a friend of C, and C is a friend of D, then surely A and D will also get along just fabulously.
Which is complete idiocy. Humans are not that one-dimensional personalities. It can well be that A and D are completely opposite personalities and don't even have any common topics to discuss.
I mean just look around you. You surely remember at least a case of some girlfriend's friend who you thought was an airhead. Or some friend's sibbling/parent/classmate/neighbour/friend who you thought was jerk or a complete idiot.
And that's already just two degrees of separation. Go any further and it becomes 100% lottery. The chances to have anything in common are the same as if you picked a random stranger off the street. Because essentially they _are_ a random stranger.
So basically why the heck do I need to be notified that a bunch of strangers are in Jack's pub? I could just go into Jack's anyway and be assured to find a bunch of strangers in there anyway.
2. Friendship is a two-sided thing. When you're free (or even _expected_) to just add people to your friends list without their confirmation, it's getting even more meaningless.
It just means you can get spammed by some people you don't even like. That annoying ex, the local tag-along loser, some relative who actually gets on your nerves, whatever. Now go along that line through several degrees of separation. It's pretty much guaranteed to be more stuff you'd rather avoid than a case of "omg! I must go quickly to the pub so I don't miss him/her!"
3. At the risk of being offensive, I can see the potential for such a service to get choked full of losers.
There's a lot more potential in it for people who just need to pretend they have a lot of friends. No, seriously, anyone who can put equals between a "friend" and being connected through 6 degrees of separation to a perfect stranger, most likely doesn't have any real friends to start with.
Re:Bruce Sterling's Killer App. (Score:1, Insightful)
Wether it is open source, that sci-fi story, the decent social security in Europe, it is all "communism" in the eyes of some for no good reason.