This week Google announced it would be shutting down Dodgeball, a text-messaging social networking application that they acquired in 2005.
I am a user of Dodgeball.
My group of friends uses Dodgeball to "check in" at various bars, restaurants and private venues (house parties) around San Francisco. Every night I get a bunch of text messages telling me which bars my friends are at and the exact street addresses of those bars.
Dodgeball never attracted a ton of users, but it inspired the few users it did have to create the next generation of similar services.
Twitter is a Dodgeball clone. Seriously.
Well, really Pownce and Jaiku are too (the "Leah C." short name format on Pownce is a nod to Dodgeball). Just take a look at the current top Dodgeball users in San Francisco. We love Dodgeball - it's our prototype and inspiration. Among my group of friends it is OUR social networking site. Pownce was used by a few of my good friends, but Dodgeball is used amongst all us.
It pleases me to see the influence Dodgeball has had on how we interact via mobile and short messages. However, Dodgeball still has no real competitors. I don't think there's anything out there that has the simplicity and the core database of places. As to why Dodgeball never went mainstream, I hate to think that its because most people don't know how to party (or party-hop).
I have heard that Dodgeball may be rebuilt - either inside Google or not. For now the service is still running... no official shut-down date has been announced.
So until then, let's party.
* the San Francisco outdoor biker bar, Zeitgeist, is said to be the most popular location on Dodgeball.
** my favorite blog post about Dodgeball is this one by Rick
