Google Accounts were integrated into dodgeball.com — a company Google acquired back in May 2005 that allows users with cell phones to notify their friends via text messages (SMS) as to what bar or restaurant they currently are at (and thus where their friends can meet them for a drink).
Earlier this week, Google Mobile, which is Google’s search engine for cell phones, revealed public testing of Google Ads in their search results. Google is obviously getting all their ducks in a row as they get serious about tackling local advertising and expanding their advertising services to other platforms, particularly mobile devices. dodgeball.com is the perfect service for both local and national advertisers to get in front of people at the point of purchase (whether it’s beer, liquor, local bar happy hour specials, or local Italian restaurants).
Since purchasing the company, Google has done relatively nothing with dodgeball.com, other than provide it with its own 5-digit SMS shortcode. Prior to the shortcode, they were operating using cell phone email addresses, which is a cost-effective (free!) method that a mobile-based start-up can use to get off the ground. Alternatively, text messages being sent through a SMS gateway can cost a mobile-based company anywhere from $0.03 – $0.05 per inbound (”MO”, mobile originated) and outbound (”MT”, mobile terminated) text message. Unfortunately, most users don’t understand that they can send/receive emails as text messages using their cell phone and only incur standard text messaging fees, without any added data fees from their cell carrier. I believe the high costs required for a company to operate a standard 5-digit SMS code has attributed to why the U.S. has lagged in mobile text messaging adoption behind Europe and Japan. I am unsure of how many cell phone models and cell carriers can send/receive emails as standard text messages, but would sure be curious to know.
Marshall Kirkpatrick reviewed a number of other SMS services last month.
More on this story at TailRank and a very interesting post by Chris Messina.
Interesting idea and a great oppty for local advertizing (like Pizza parlors etc.)…The only thing I hate about this idea is that a user has to type in his/her coordinates on the mobile phone. May be I am old, but I just hate typing SMSs on regular phones because of the keyboards (blackberry is ok).
I hope that at some point, all these places like clubs, restaurant etc. that cater to dodgeball crowd, have a machine readable code. Cell phone scan then take a picture of these codes and send them to the server…The server can decode it and send out the information to all the other members of dodgeball. This will make the whole process a lot smoother and more usable for older folks like me.
I wonder when we will see a Dodgeball API?
i can’t see this working in huddersfield, west yorkshire …
Although it is possible to send email using a cellfone, it’s significant more key presses and more hassle. Another frustration is charging users to send *and* receive text messages, which doesn’t exist in the UK (or even Europe, as far as I know). Sending costs, and receiving is free. It would be nice to see US carriers adopt this model too.
Btw, in answer to your question, I think most US carriers allow customers to receive text messages via email:
T-Mobile: phonenumber@tmomail.net
Virgin Mobile: phonenumber@vmobl.com
Cingular: phonenumber@cingularme.com
Sprint: phonenumber@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: phonenumber@vtext.com
Nextel: phonenumber@messaging.nextel.com
I’ve found this list quite useful a few times. There’s also a universal service offered by Teleflip.com. Just email 0000000000@teleflip.com (replace zeros with phone number to message). Haven’t personally tried this though, so I don’t know how reliable it is.
am i missing something? why couldnt I just send a text message to my friend that said “At Jimmy’s Bar” ? I’ve always been able to do this….
Our site uses the same email to sms gateways with the carriers. All of the major carriers have them and many small ones do as well. Since mCruising is adult in nature (connects men for meeting up), we are safer using the email gateways than with a shortcode.
THe main difference is that the email is not guaranteed like with a SMS.
MMS delivers the cell phone email and it works with attached pictures/video. Now, most share pictures and video by handing the phone to friends. Some can do the download to a PC. Relatively few do MMS with media attached but we are learning. I expect MMS+media attachments will expand rapidly as new cell phones make it easier to store email information.
I’m with #5 on this one – couldn’t you use the phone to, you know, dial your friend’s number and ask him where he is? Or have I been doing it wrong this entire time?
The useful part of Dodgeball (and twitter) is when you have more than one friend. You update to Dodgeball what’s going on and then your other friends on the service can all find out where you’re at. Dodgeball adds some social networking stuff onto it–you can find out where friends of friends are at.
I agree with #5 (cg) and #8 (Jake) here.
I’ve been coordinating party time with friends long before cell phones were available in the US. I got my first cell phone in 1993, and was of the few in my social circle to have one at that time.
Earlier this week I coordinated a meet-up in a nightclub between US friends (arriving in Europe from NYC) and local friends (residents of European city) all by multi-recipient SMS/MMS and AIM (native support on Treo 700P/Sprint). Using SMS/MMS and AIM there was no there was no need for me to even have an international calling plan. I have no idea what handsets/carriers all parties were using, the info wasn’t necessary or germane. And yes, I could have done the same with e-mail, however SMS/MMS is much useful for when remotely navigating someone through a maze (and haze) of nightclubs
Also, wasn’t Dodgeball’s original service proximity based in some way? Wasn’t there a limit to the range of physical distance in which your friends are visible? Something like a 10 mile radius?
I remember thinking when Google/Dodgeball acquisition was first announced:
1) This is truly creepy, the “crush” feature takes cyberstalking to whole new level. Hopefully, there’s a robust privacy feature.
2) “Thankfully, this is completely impractical for cities like Los Angeles and San Diego”
Dodgeball won’t really interest me until all phones use GPS to automatically update it (when you have your privacy settings set to do so). To manually update it is silly – I’d rather just call my friends if I cared to meet them (or use multi-recepient SMS)…
I think that Pubwalk.com will evently replace dodgeball with full LBS setup
re: #5 and #8 – you can have more than one group, which makes multi person messaging a lot easier to manage (ex: my co-workers, friends, triathlon training group, etc) so you can target your mass messaging…. do my co-workers need to know where iam going for a lunch-time run? NO. do my training partners? of course.
the other component which some find stalker-esque but others enjoy is the friends of friends feature (you are notified if your friends’ friends are in a certain proximity) – that proximity varies by city, i think. so in NYC it may be 10 blocks, in other areas the range is different. the dodgball guys get the fact that every city has a different layout.
the crush feature is more funny than stalker and they do not tell the person with the crush where the subject of their crush is – so really no safety issues.
Here you will get everything !!!
Is Dodgeball still on? I got a ‘page not found’ error.