Google has announced the acquisition of the social networking firm Dodgeball.com, in a deal whose financial terms were not made public.
For those unsure what social networking is, or indeed what Dodgeball.com brings to the world, here is a brief overview. Dodgeball.com is a service which allows users to "check-in" to a location in one of 22 cities across the United States using their phone. When they check-in, Dodgeball.com sends all of their friends a text message to let them know where their friends are.
As well as alerting friends across the 22 cities where you are, the Dodgeball.com service can also notify friends of friends if you are both within ten blocks of each other. It is also capable of notifying you when your "crushes" check in near by. Handily you can have up to five crushes to keep your options nice and open.
Prior to being taken over by Google, Dodgeball.com was a two man company started by two University students, Alex Rainert and Dennis Crowley. A statement from Crowley about the takeover reads as follows:
As a two-person team, Alex and I have taken dodgeball about a far as we can alone. Since we finished grad school, we've been trying to figure out how to grow dodgeball and make it a better service along the way. We talked to a lot of different angel investors and venture capitalists, but no one really "got" what we were doing - that is until we met Google.
This is the sort of service that Google will no doubt be keen to integrate with both their Google Local and Google Mobile services, although is no firm direction on the site as to what is likely to change. Current users of Dodgeball.com will no doubt want to read the new Dodgeball.com terms and conditions and privacy policy, both of which are now taken from the Google equivalents.
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