DodgeBall – another mobile social network
By Dusan Belic on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008 at 8:40 AM PST In Services
While we don’t see many of the new pure desktop web-based social networks appearing these days, the mobile social networking space is booming as never before. We’ve already covered several such services in the past, and today we’re presenting you with DodgeBall.
Just like some of the services we’ve seen before, DodgeBall relies heavily on SMS to allow users with virtually any mobile phone to schmooze while on-the-go. In addition to “standard feature set,” the new service provides users with some kind of rating mechanism giving you an ability to “fancy someone” on scale between 1 and 5 crushes. That being said, I can easily envision DodgeBall’s key selling point being the mobile dating, and not just chatting and exchanging emails with your buddies. The system also has the location component built inside, hence it can inform you when someone with enough “crushes” is in the neighborhood. Let’s just hope stalkers won’t use it. 
UPDATE: I’ve almost forgot. DodgeBall has been recently acquired by Google (NSDQ: GOOG), and now you can login using your Google account.
[Via: Great Dating Services]
How is this new? Everyone knows that dodgeball has been around for a while and went fail clear visible here http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/dodgeball.com
Also, the original owners walked out because they were tired of Google.
Dodgeball is nothing new, it’s just another addition to “Acquired by Google graveyard”. Google is where great services go to die.
Just like Jaiku, just take a look at jaiku’s graph on Alexa and you will notice the same trend line… goodbye Jaiku, it was fun while you were still in private ownership.
It’s not that new, I just spotted it recently.
And I would argue Google is where great services die. Writely as Google Documents for instance is now better and more used than ever before.
Plus, I wouldn’t point to Alexa for any data. They are so irrelevant.
I myself though have never used Google Apps, GTalk, GMail or any other Google software besides search. And I’m pretty technical and enjoying trying out new apps.
I think another thing to consider is that a lot of people still don’t know what a social network is, let alone a mobile social network.
Dodgeball was decent in its conception, but there are far better mobile social networks out there.
The reason why I mentioned Alexa is because Google never gives its “true” numbers to the public regarding its aquired apps. Quantcast or SiteMeter would easily tell one how a site is doing. Alexa is not the greatest or the most accurate, but they are pretty consistent.
Oh and btw, link 5 of related articles points to a “mobile social network” called peekamo that has an interesting twist. They use “free text” as a means to promote their social network. I joined, its interesting so I’ve added it to my link as I think others should try it. It is probably the first social network that has provided me with more than just the “perceived” value.
Its no dodgeball or jaiku, and far from facebook, but lets hope google doesn’t land their hands on this one, because its got potential.
Dusna, is this some cynical joke?
youre ‘presenting’ a service that has been around for at least 5 years, has been ‘recently’ acquired by google (read FOUR f’en YEARS AGO), and hasn’t seen a single update for about 3? one that original owners walked out of after google showed no interest in developing it further?
unless this is some anti-humor attempt, i hope your writing and ‘reporting’ career dies before you discover yet another ‘recent’ bit of news, like, i dont know… http://www.geocities.com ?
f’sakes..
No, I just tried using it, that’s it and decided to share info about it. Plus it was a slow news day…
Apparently the conversation ends here:
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2009/01/changes-for-jaiku-and-farewell-to.html
Dodgeball is being taken offline.