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A couple of weeks back, we talked about how you could use Google SMS to find out all sorts of good NYC information using your mobile phone. Google recently bought Dodgeball, our favorite NYC mososo service, which lets you tell your friends where you are. (And yes, we said "mososo"-- that's what the cool-kids huge nerds call mobile social software.) Yesterday, Dodgeball head honcho Dens emailed to let us know about another cool feature:
we built some new stuff into dodgeball, one of the cooler things being that you can now tag venues on dodgeball. the idea is that people will use the tags to tell us about the places they frequent (e.g. Ace Bar = pool table + buck hunter + skeeball + darts + brooklyn lager + lunchboxes). tags themselves are nothing new, but the cool thing is that you can search our tags - based on proximity - from your phone.for example, looking for a pool table near Ace Bar, send us "ace bar?pool table" and we'll spit back the 5 closest matches. or fireplace near The Magician (magician?fireplace) or a pac man table near Botanica (botanica?pacman) or fish tacos near Pianos (pianos?fish tacos) or whatever. it's pretty slick - and no one is doing
anything like it.
Check out the full tag-list-- some of them are pretty fun: 3 Michelen stars, Beer Pong, Locals, Pick-up Spot. That's a whole night of fun! Take your date to a nice restaurant, get dumped, go out for some beer-pong with some locals, pick-up a one-night stand! Boo-ya!
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So beyond the people who might have guessed what a mososo is, does anybody actually use these services? I mean, when I go out, I go out to escape the internets, not bring them along for the ride...
Dodgeball is a great service in concept, but falls flat in real world use. Like most dot-com high-concepts. Have you ever simply tried to get people together while bar hopping? SMS messaging while drunk and distracted just does not work.
I use dodgeball all the time. Its great for when you're out and trying to find the address of a bar, restaurant or club. try it, you'll be amazed.
gothamist?
Dodgeball works for certain uses. It does not replace actual phone calls for trying to coordinate social activities - unless you use some of its obscure features.
Also, finding a pool table on Dodgeball isn't a "hack"; it's a purposely implemented, documented, supported feature of the service. Just like frying an egg isn't a frying pan "hack".
FWIW after my post I got an e-mail from Dennis Crowley that basically defends Dodgeball.
Like anything in life Dodgeball does work for some uses. But call me old fashioned, but I've never been in a social situation where a phone call failed me. And groups of people tend to converge and randomly bump into each other organically in certain neighborhoods. Williamsburg, LES and Park Slope to name a few. People did congregate together before flash mobs and SMS messaging you know.
And as a tech, I find the idea of SMS messaging to be a pain to begin with. If I'm out with friends the last thing on my mind is trying to type into my cellphone.
jack, i wonder if you think dodgeball sucks because you never leave your house so you can comment on gothamist all day? now if you could use dodgeball to comment on gothamist, that might be more useful for you?
Dear 'jackhole'. Please count the number of comments I post on Gothamist. There have been two posts in the past month where I have posted more than not. Otherwise, the vast majority of Gothamist is left commentless by me. Others post far more often and the facts stand for themselves.
Also, the whole phrasing and grammar of this snide response matches well with Dennis Crowley's odd personal message to me defending his service. Quite sad that someone who owns a service like Dodgeball sees fit to lash out at anyone who dares make any criticism towards it.
If it's not you Dennis, my apologies.
dodgeball also works for people that show up uninvited to events/bars to hang out with people...or so i hear.
> Quite sad that someone who owns a service like
> Dodgeball sees fit to lash out at anyone who
> dares make any criticism towards it.
hey jack, sorry man, but not me.
for the record, whenever I find blog posts from people who were confused about the service or seem to have had a hard time using it, I always follow-up with an email asking them for suggestions on how we can make dodgeball better / more relevant to them.
if you have any feedback, you can send it to me at dens@dodgeball.com
thanks.
/d