Seeking New Contacts in the Digital World

Nick Douglas used to want to avoid a highly annoying couple in his neighborhood and succeeded in doing so through Dodgeball. The comedy writer hopeful who resides in San Francisco is actually referring to a mobile phone service and not the ever popular childhood game everyone knows. The former, a mobile phone service, is one that can actually inform you of the whereabouts or the locations of your friends by means of short messaging service or text messaging. Dougles reports that thanks to Dodgeball, he was able to be informed about the couple’s activities, including their errands as well as their outings. This knowledge gave him the opportunity to ignore them for several weeks, the twenty four year old funny man reported.

Hide and Seek: A Welcome Development

In social mapping services, something like Dodgeball is welcomed by people like Nick Douglas. Though it may be safe to assume that such a service may not be good news for the people who are actually avoided, many have welcomed such an innovation. Indeed, being able to play hide and seek with your mobile phone by way of social mapping services such as Dodgeball is something almost everyone needs at some points. This nifty service was launched in 2001 and the founder, Dennis Crowley, actually had a hard time illustrating the concept of the service to his friends and prospective network of users. This was because back then, there really was no prevalent idea of social mapping and this many people could not understand it from the outset, Dennis Crowley explains.

Gaining Acceptance with the Advent of Social Networking

But thanks to the introduction of social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, the concept of social networking became known to all and has thus become a daily habit practiced by many Internet users all over the world. In fact, the past two years brought about more than half a dozen competitors or Dodgeball in an attempt to gain for themselves a slice of the pie. Some of the more noteworthy companies include Whrrl, Brightkite and Loopt. However, the necessary data for such services are a bit difficult to come by, according to Charles Golvin who is an analyst for the company Forrester Research. Golving still recounts good estimates that the users amount up to a couple of millions, in aggregates. However, the concept of a private life is slowly evolving and a lot less number of individuals is balking at the idea of them actually broadcasting their very random and private thoughts, as well as their whereabouts, to these social networking sites. In a funny twist, despite these apprehensions social networking sites continue to rise in popularity as well as the demand for services such as the one Dodgeball offers.