In May of 2005, Google acquired Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service. It has only just begun to combine the technology with its other services though. In October of this year, it started asking new members to access the site through their Google accounts.
The service, available in 22 cities, recently added Google mapping tools. What it does is relay text messages which announce users’ locations to their friends and some mutual friends. It combines that information with maps, reviews, comments, profiles, and photographs. Users choose which friends they want to notify, and then tell Dodgeball when they are at a specific club, library, park, etc.
It should be interesting to see exactly how Google plans on monetizing this acquisition, since they are just now going ahead with developing it. Are they planning on placing text and video ads through the service? Undoubtedly.
How about this.. Since your friends have profiles which you will be able to view as well as the capability of seeing maps, why not serve ads about what they like. Say their favorite dessert is cheesecake. You might have a text ad show up on your phone displaying The Cheesecake Factory which is two blocks away. Or maybe they like to ski.. Hotels.com could display the most recent deals on weekend ski trips.
Even through I don’t live in one of the 22 cities which run the service, I can assure you that my ads would say Starbucks! What better way to impress someone than to already know what they like?
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Too bad, it isn’t available in India
I know. It isn’t available where I live either. It would be cool though.
Its only available in 22 cities in US as well…