Dodgeball knocked out By Twitter? Google Snacks on DCLK- Is Twitter Next?
Posted in Blogging, Civic Issues, E-Commerce, Future Shock, Google Verse, Social Bookmarking, Social Networks, Technology, Twitter, Web 2.0 by wayne.porter on April 16th, 2007 Dodgeball, the text-message based social networking service, seems to have been left for dead.
Dennis Crowley, the founder of Dodgeball, and Alex Rainert have both left the sinking Dodgeball ship. Acquired by Google in 2005, Crowley insists that Google is not providing the resources necessary to innovate their service, let alone keep up with recently popular Twitter and newcomer Jaiku. Crowley and Rainert have decided to quit Google, leaving Dodgeball to fend for itself. An announcement from Crowley says that the whole experience at Google was frustrating, “especially as we couldn’t convince them that Dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space.â€
In the end, that leaves Twitter the reigning chief. Not that their dominance was in question as of late, but Dodgeball is sure to meet its end very soon. It’s a shame that Google never built up Dodgeball, considering the current and future mobile market, but then again, Google has $3.1 billion deals to tend to.
Much is going on, but here we hear Dodgeballers are leaving…why? In my opinion you might have Google who has developed more of a sweetspot for Twitter…(not to mention the smack down on Double Click granted MSFT doesn’t throw in a legal tackle with anti-trust- huh?)…ok I am not counting out Jaiku (now hatching an API), but I dunno…at least the banner might come back…back!
Ha! Steve Rubel and I agree…if you cannot see the value in Twitter or Oxbow lakes- if you cannot see the massive changes that “micro-chunking” will bring. Well…You cannot be helped…really you are doomed. Rumor is that all your Facebook might be curling up with Twitter features???
Then you do you have to wonder…AOL….MSFT, Yahoo, or Google? Who is going to acquire America Online- because you can “feel it”. My money was on MSFT, but after this, I think it might be Google might- who knows…hint to Microsoft- a war chest is not a war chest- unless you use it to go to war- damnit! Makes you wonder about Valueclick and CJ?
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[...] Dodgeball Founder Departure - April, 2007 post [...]
have to admit that I’m not–yet. So the first time I heard the question, which was literally as I was getting off the plane and encountering dozens of familiar faces, I wasn’t sure what these folks were talking about.
But there they were, three people in a small, little circle, all checking their Twitter.
Twitter is a new mobile phone service that lets members inform each other, in real-time, about what they’re doing and what they think about things. You join people’s friends lists and they join yours, and then you can send messages from your phone or from your computer’s instant messaging client.
According to LaughingSquid.com blogger Scott Beale, Twitter is “absolutely ruling” SXSWi. Social software researcher Danah Boyd said Twitter is “owning” the festival.
Then again, there’s the Dodgeball crowd. That ancient mobile service, all of two or three years old, and one of the very first so-called mobile social software services–MoSoSos–is still around. It, too, lets your friends know what you’re doing, and where you’re going, and it, too, is still staking a claim to a bit of the SXSWi mindshare.
Even among Twitter users, Dodgeball has its adherents.
But for many of the people here, Dodgeball is a little too hard to use. In my very non-scientific survey, Twitter is winning the SXSWi battle.
Boyd said while in that little circle at the airport, she’d gotten more than 40 Twitter messages while on the flight to Austin. So, it seems to me that here, with thousands of people dying to tell each other where they are and what they’re doing, Twitter might get a tad unwieldy.
But I’ll be heading over to Twitter.com now to sign up now.