It’s a big night for Bump Technologies, the mobile software startup that recently landed a round of funding led by Sequoia Capital. The company makes mobile apps that let users share their contact information (and other data) simply by tapping their phones together. Up until now the app has been available for the iPhone only, where it’s developed quite a following, and tonight it’s launching on Android as well. The iPhone is getting some love too, as Bump’s 1.2 update was just approved by Apple (you can grab it here).
The updated iPhone app includes a ‘Friend Compare’ feature that looks at the address book and Facebook profiles of you and the person you’re bumping with to see if you have any mutual friends, which can be a good way to break the ice if you’re meeting someone for the first time. The app now also includes deeper Facebook integration, allowing you to send a notification to yourself through Facebook when you bump someone (this seems like it would serve as a good reminder for following up). You can also choose to publish an item to your friends’ News Feeds when you Bump a new contact. Finally there’s the addition of a Bump history, which lets you see at a glance who, where, and when you’ve met all of your contacts (you can use filters to search through the history quickly).
The Android app is still a bit behind the iPhone (it doesn’t have the features mentioned above), but it does have everything Bump 1.1 has, which includes support for both contact and photo swapping. Better yet, Bump is cross-platform, which means that you can bump an Android phone with an iPhone and it should work seamlessly. This is where the real potential of Bump lies — if the service can establish itself on more mobile platforms, it could potentially become the de facto way to swap contacts, photos, and other media between phones with next to no effort required. You can grab the new Android version here (you’ll want to visit the link from your Android phone).
That means I could bump and iPhone with an Android. AWESOME!!!
By the way, I saw you at TC about an hour ago.
wow … thats huge.
Mmmmhhhhhmmmmmmm……
I really wish when you bumped with someone, you had the option of automatically following each other on Twitter, adding each other on FB/Linkedin, etc.
Exchanging contact information is obviously important and likely will be for the foreseeable future. However, social media is pretty important right now. For me, being sure to add all the people I meet in the physical world on all the social networks I use is pretty difficult. If Bump made this easy for me, it would be really cool.
Imagine being at a get together, bumping all the interesting people you meet and having them added to your online social graph.
Spencer, thanks for the comment; making it easier to connect through social networks is one of our goals. This release is the first step towards that, if both users are logged into Facebook and are not friends, you will receive a Facebook notification with a link to the other person’s profile (no FB API for friend requests currently). In the long run we will support more and more social networks.
Jake
Co-founder, Bump Technologies
Clarification: Facebook notifications is a feature of Bump 1.2 for iPhone (not currently available on Bump for Android).
question: does Bump update user profiles that change … automatically … to everyone connected to that user, the way Dub does? thx
Very cool. I’ll have to try that.
Hrm… that is actually a pretty awesome idea. Kudos.
Thank you TC for the latest most up to date new… Always ahead of that bastard moving target curve…
someone will make malware that can hop phones during a bump
Does this work with WIFI or Bluetooth, anyways, this will never replace the visiting cards , faster and saves battery
Bump requires both users have an internet connection, but works when one phone is on WiFi and the other is on Cellular.
Apple should just buy them and build this into their iphones. I don’t know if they have bought many or any of their apps, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this was there first.
Bleh, why would you want it to be under the control of one device manufacturer? It makes more sense for a 3rd party to develop it for more than one platform or even better for it to be an open protocol to allow even more possibilities.
It cant be amazing technology, why buy when you can make it, im guessing all it is is the motion sensor and bluetooth?
If only I could Bump the phone with my laptop, dvr, car, coffee maker, and refrigerator… and the matrix… my problems would be solved.
Just don’t bump onto a car man…
Amazing Stuff
Good app, I have it on my iPhone. But 3M funding for this is a bit too much i think
I think this is as dump as a technology gets. You need to turn on “location awareness” when the guy is just in front of you?
Come on…. get real! They are merely working around the bluetooth issue of having to:
1) turn on your bluetooth
2) search for the other dude’s bluetooth
3) pair
4) maybe even have to use a password
5) transfer
Yes, it’s that painful. And bump is no more than a quick fix rather than a disruptive technology.
I believe the Japanese did it best when they put RFID into their phones and did everything with it. For something as simple as a few bits of data, iphone should be doing the same and putting in RFID chips into our phones. Then you can use it for EVERYTHING, paying for food, transport, etc.
I can’t believe Sequoia of all VCs would actually invest in this. My confidence level of them has dropped 10 folds.
dump = dumb
I think Bump technology is cool, and is a neat way to transfer some inconsequential data, which would have taken few more minutes otherwise.
But I have to ask this, what’s in it for VC investment? Even if there is a biz model, how big is it? So now Tier 1 VCs like Sequoia are investing in mom&pop store businesses as well. That’s surprising esp coming from a VC farm noteworthy for that infamous “RIP Good times!” slides.
Don’t get me wrong Bump, I love what you do, and I have your app on my iPhone!
useless, but idea is funny; and did they found on $3m company for this? omg – this is only the fart machine category, not more
Does people seriously expect professionals to go up to each other at conferences and go, “Hey, wanna Bump” ?
Bump gets a lot of press, but I’ve been using Dub because it works iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. Also updates your address book. Not sure bumping phones comes across as professional, more for fun with friends.
is there any way to transfer (non DRM) media files (such as video or audio) directly, locally between mobile devices?
Decent app, perhaps suffering from impending featuritis.
Concerns:
Basic version will be built into phones soon enough. Thats what majority of people want, here, take my vcard, done.
Round trip through Bump servers feels like it should be unnecessary. I don’t care if it’s encrypted, the person is 1 foot away from me, its called a PAN, personal area network. That does not include a venture-backed company that is probably going to get sold (plaxo/comcast comes to mind).
What is the real reason for the R/T through the server? Ease of use or data acquisition? It’s all happy startup land until people stop using the app as much and investors start pushing for revenue and the only thing they have is customer data.
Feels like Bump will come out on top right now, but don’t forget Dub.
R/T data = data mining abilities.
David, very valid concerns. The reason we move traffic through our servers is because that removes a lot of the cross-platform difficulties in other solutions like Bluetooth. Phones with modems can universally connect easily to an server, but may not be able to connect to each other (are there any apps that let you connect an iPhone to an Android over Bluetooth?).
We do not store any of the data that passes through our servers, check out our privacy policy: http://bumptech...m/privacy.phtml
Thanks!
Jake@Bump
Congrats to Bump. It’ll be interesting to see where they take the product. But as David said above, don’t forget about Dub. We’re available across multiple platforms, including iPhone and Android and are one of the top downloaded apps on BlackBerry.
Good luck to the Bump guys. I believe there’s plenty of room for both of us.
Cheers!
Chris Hopkinson
http://www.dubmenow.com
chris@dubmenow.com
http://blog.dubmenow.com
This app doesn’t use Bluetooth? Really? Gotta have the data travel to space and back to transfer? How inefficient. Lame.