Google spokesman David Krane has confirmed the firm's acquisition of Dodgeball, a social networking service that enables its members to link up with friends and acquaintances using text messages sent to phones.
New York-based Dodgeball.com formally launched last year as an expansion of a grad-school project started at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program. The service lets users "check in" their location at a bar, club, restaurant, or other local gathering spot, then transmits that information as a text message to the mobile phones of selected other Dodgeball.com users in the area. The goal is to spark in-person connections among friends, acquaintances, and friends-of-friends.
The people at Google think like us. They looked at us in a "You're two guys doing some pretty cool stuff, why not let us help you out and let's see what you can do with it" type of way. We liked that. Plus, Alex and I are both Google superfans and the people we've met so far are smart, cool and excited about what they're working on. - Dodgeball.
This acquisition demonstrates the ongoing attempt by Google to diversity, investing in technologies that attempt to unify social interaction with technology.