Mobile Beacons

Judith points to a new social networking service utilizing mobile phone technology for locating friends. The new service, Dodgeball.Social is the result of a project started at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Though I haven't signed up as of yet, I've looked around to see how it works. It is surprisingly simple, actually. Dodgeball.Social relies on a check-in/check-out method to determine the location of friends. Essentially, registered members send along a quick text e-mail to the service that indicates where they are located. This serves as an alert which notifies your circle of immediate friends. The neatest part, however, is that it will also alert you of Friends of Friends that are within 10 blocks of your current location (with photos if your phone supports it).

I'm particularly interested in this technology as it is in the spirit of the SparkCard -- encourage people to go outside and interact with each other. In addition, this type of service has interesting uses in some other, yet to be announced, features of the SparkCard itself. Details will follow.

If anyone is interested in trying this out, please let me know (greg at socialtwister dot com) or leave a comment.