Stealth startup Hyphen-8 has been beta testing their new mobile social network called Lime Juice in San Francisco since October.
Using your phone to create or enhance real world interactions is a killer application, but no one has cracked the nut yet. The reason is that the network is useless until it achieves a critical mass of users who are online and using the application via their mobile phone. If no one else is online, there’s little point in you being online, either. And presence detection is another (technical) problem. Even if people have joined the network, how do you know when they are near you?
But once it does happen, look out. You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc. (if they choose to share that information). Forget meeting via an online dating site and then organizing an awkward in person meeting that usually falls flat. Instead, you can do the online an real world thing simultaneously.
We’ve kept an eye on the new startups launching in this space. Check out Rummble, Mig33, ZYB, Mocospace, Aka-Aki, Nokia Sensor, Dodgeball, Mobiluck, MeetMoi and Imity, just to get warmed up. But none of them yet have critical mass (Mig33, however, is turning into a very large cheap VOIP provider on the side).
LimeJuice now joins the group with a unique product. Users can actually join on the fly, via SMS. And the company is sponsoring party after party at bars and clubs in San Francisco to get users to try out the product with lots of others at the same time. The test results are encouraging – people are using it. A lot.
How It Works
The goal is to allow people in a bar or other social gathering to learn a little about the people around them, and flirt via the mobile network as a way to break the ice. The details are what makes LimeJuice interesting. It’s dead simple to join and use.
First, users can register for the service via SMS. That means if just one person in a bar is a member or even knows about the service, they can tell others and quickly get a core group to join. When you create an account, you tell it something distinctive about yourself (tall blonde, red dress!) so that people searching will be able to quickly know who you are. When you go to another event later on, you simple update the description for the evening).
Second, all of the key interaction (for now) happens via SMS. So every phone is ready to go. No need to download a java app or even go to a web page. Just send a text message to the service along with the identifier of the person you want to talk to (which you can get via search), and the message is sent to them.
Third, even though people are using the service to send text messages back and forth, phone numbers are not exchanged. LimeJuice sits in the middle, and you can block someone easily.
Beta Events
LimeJuice has seen a good level of participation at the handful of events they’ve sponsored. An average of 40-50 people participate per event. They spend about 1.5 hours each using the service over the course of the evening and average ten text messages sent per person (some people send as many as 180 text messages). At one event, over 2,500 messages were sent to the service from participants.
For now the company will continue to sponsor events in San Francisco, hopefully building up a core user base that will begin to spread out and get others to join. If/when they get a lot of people in San Francisco to use the service, they’ll then expand to other cities.
The company, founded by Tobin Van Pelt and John Garrett, is based in San Francisco and has four employees. They’ve self funded to date with $100,000 and are currently pitching for a Series A round of funding.
Great Article Mike.
Can you please write a post on where do start page services like netvibes, pageflakes etc (not the big guys) stand these days? As a business model and as a product..
This could be promoted by the establishments themselves to their techie patrons as a way to enhance the karma.
If it succeeds, this could bring returning loyal visitors to these establishment in mass
I like LimeJuice because it’s an innovative solution on top of an existing technology platform that everyone has access to and uses already. I have played in a game and it’s incredibly easy, intuitive and fun. For those who actually get out from behind their computers and enter real social networks, it adds a new but familiar dimension! Keep an eye on these guys and find the next game…
Nice way to break the ice and goodbye actually going over to someone you think looks interesting and talking to them first. Looks catchy
The professional services space for independent trades needs this badly, but the capital is just not becoming available for such blue-collar interactions. I should contact these guys. http://www.squi...om/ThruDispatch
Great, but weren’t they telling us 5 years ago we’d be doing all this with Bluetooth devices?
i’m gonna use this to track clients i want to acquire. i’ll go everywhere they go. it won’t be considered stalking
if they reject me, it would be fun to stalk them. I could call a guy’s wife when he’s in a titty bar and say, “hey girl, you’re man is out have too good of a time.” and by the way, tell him to buy my stuff. i’ll keep tabs on him for you for a small fee.
sincerely,
angela hayden
art goddess
P.S. I think I’ll name my new business, What the hell is my husband doing now.
Web 2.0 is to mucho fasto.
The biggest obstacle is building a user base rather than the technology so it seems more likely that a large, existing community like Facebook will ultimately win out in this area rather than a start up with only the technology. I’d be interested to know if Limejuice’s business model is to simply get big enough to be acquired or are they actually trying to become a stand alone service.
“Using your phone to create or enhance real world interactions is a killer application, but no one has cracked the nut yet.”
I’m pretty sure AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, and T-Mobile have, among others. It’s called a phone call.
“But once it does happen, look out. You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc. (if they choose to share that information). Forget meeting via an online dating site and then organizing an awkward in person meeting that usually falls flat. Instead, you can do the online an real world thing simultaneously.”
I’m pretty sure an actual conversation could do the same thing. Jesus, is this the evolution of geek dating? It’s like a sad little version of Twitter.
Wow…now let me get this straight…instead of just keeping an eye out for those hot chicks in a bar, you scan the environment for fellow limejuice clients, chat them up, not knowing who they are or what they look like, and then you home in on each of them hoping that for some reason they are the girl of your dreams. All of this while looking like a complete idiot who goes into a bar just to keep fumbling with his cell phone.
Frankly… I think I’ll stick with just going over there…it’s just a lot more smooth and you know what you’re getting from the start…But of course it’s a good alternative for nerds who otherwise wouldn’t go out at all.
Think you forgot Buzzcity – its Asia based and is probably one of the largest mobile based social networks in the world
A little too simple if you ask me, and everyone does!
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Sounds like fun if it actually happened, but it sounds like they’re trying to make a dodgeball.com spin-off. The only problem is that no one seems to be mentioning that Dodgeball sank faster than the Titanic.
Also when talking about mobile social networks, it might be worthwhile to mention wadja (http://m.wadja.com).
users can register for the service via SMS- this will minimize chances for creating fake profile.
Although the sentence “You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc.” automatically activated my Auto-Cynic 2.0 (”what’s wrong with looking at their ring finger, attempting to catch their eye, asking them if you can buy them a drink, then if you’re rejected, smile and move on?”) I do actually believe that breaking the ice via the less aggressive medium of texting would be desirable. Particularly as I am not one of the world’s best at actually doing what you’re supposed to – I have a very narrow margin between ‘too sober to speak to strangers’ and ‘too drunk to speak at all’. And I find it much easier to be witty through text than conversation. I expect that applies to most people – being better with text than speech that is – even outside the geek-oriented audience that reads TechCrunch.
But the service would have to gain huge critical mass to be useful. It’d be much harder than getting critical mass for an Internet-based social network, because for this critical mass is the point at which there’s a good chance that in any random bar or club, at least one reasonably attractive person will be using the service. That’s much bigger than the usual ‘there’s enough people to talk to’.
So wake me when that critical mass does happen. Organising parties is a good idea but there’s no guarantee that anyone will continue using the service in a normal bar the weekend after, particularly outside San Francisco. If that doesn’t happen you’d get the same level of success and activity from a simple speed-dating event.
It is quite good but not the first one to reach there. Instead of sitting in front of PC to socialize you are using the mobile. Still interesting. Like the MoDazzle which I use to access SN sites through mobile, even it uses SMS, Looks text messaging is still going on strong.
But one doubt why it is LimeJuice why not Lemonade?
“You could be in a bar and see who’s single, who thinks you’re cute, who wants to talk to you, etc. (if they choose to share that information). Forget meeting via an online dating site and then organizing an awkward in person meeting that usually falls flat.”
Oouch! Sounds like Mike has been struggling with the ladies (or men- not that there is anything wrong with that). Don’t worry Mike, we all go through dry spells.
Sounds like the killer app is social skills, not a mobile network
#6 Joe T: right on! I loved eating up the bluetooth hype before 1.0 was available. so many digital devices doing so many things over bluetooth. then there was the threat of bluetooth dieing all together. now every phone has it but only for headsets. bluetooth should solve the ‘physical presence problem’ and neighbor discovery. but that would require a custom application.
solution: Android. once the android phones come, look out.
How do sign up? This a perfect partner for my site
http://drinkoftheweek.com
Sounds great but problem is that SF has a lot of geeks with no game. Would be interesting to see this tested in a less ‘geeky’ city.
I could see the teenage crowd loving this…. as if they aren’t socially inept enough without Facebook.
I used to see kids playing hockey and baseball in my neighbourhood. Now its Xbox and Facebook, and obesity. It’s sad.
There is so much hype about this. The general consensus stills seems to be critical mass to make these things work. And the fact that if your in a bar looking to meet someone you’d rather sit across the room from each other texting ??? As stated before – why not just go up – god by the time you’ve got your 3 texts back and forth someone will have “cut your grass” and you’ll be attempting your next text message pick up.
Why not develop a system where bars can install receivers themselves and promote patrons to interact in that bar.
That way at least we will all know where the geeks are / and also it might work as all the people coming along are tech savvy and willing to use the service.
All these sites will be crushed once facebook / myspace etc develop one of their own apps for this.
One little bit of advice –
“Deep breath / pluck up the courage and go say hi”
your going to have to talk to your future date at sometime.
Or perhaps not ….. why don’t they build a world where you can pretend to be anyone you want and do anything you want and interact with real people doing the same ……………….
Great article, it´s so nice that you give us the pros and cons of the LimeJuice´s
Oh guys, seriously! Please tell me this is a joke. This is absolutely the silliest idea I have heard of in a long time. I haven;t laughed so much for ages. Picking up people via a phone rather than actually having a conversation with real people. “Geeks of the world, unite!”.