September 23-29, 2004

naked city

Cell Phone Tag

HEAD SHOTS: Though it's yet to catch on in Philadelphia, Dodgeball.com makes it possible to meet friends of friends while out and about.

Can Dodgeball.com do for socialites what Friendster did for recluses?

by Brian Hodges

Say the word "Dodgeball" and people tend to imagine a cruel game that made them cry like little girls in gym class. But for social butterflies in an increasing number of cities, Dodgeball is something that's changing the way they go out and socialize. Hailed as "Friendster for mobile phones," Dodgeball.com, a free service compatible with any alpha-numeric text message-compatible phone, is keeping people connected to their friends and "friends-of-friends" while out and about in their local bars, clubs and restaurants.

Dodgeball users sign up online and invite other friends to join as well. Out on the town, they "check in" by sending a text message from their phone (i.e. "@ Khyber") to the Dodgeball site. A text with their location is sent to all "friends" in their network. Additionally, Dodgeball sends their location and photo (if the phone is photo-ready) to any "friends-of-friends" within a ten-block radius.

Grellan Harty of New York, who goes out an average of four nights a week, checks in often. "The average night usually begins with me going out to a bar, then "dodgeballing' to let everybody know where I am. I usually go to a couple bars in the course of the night and "dodgeball' at each one. More often than not, a friend meets me or I meet them due to a dodgeball text."

One night Harty was dodgeballing on the Lower East Side and kept getting messages saying that a "friend-of-a-friend" was nearby. "Finally, I received [a message] that said she was at the same bar. The girl's phone had photo capabilities and she sought me out. Since it was only one degree of separation, it wasn't awkward."

Dodgeball's CEO Dennis Crowley, 28, began the site in 2000 as an alternative to Citysearch.com where users write reviews of local venues. He later added "friend-finder" tools as a way for his own friends to coordinate with each other while they were out at those venues. But it wasn't until Dodgeball assimilated the now-familiar Friendster interface (with friends and friends-of-friends) that people started to get it.

"Friendster did a great job of teaching people how to use social software," says Crowley. "But Friendster doesn't really do anything for you. We allow people to use social software when they're really being social, instead of when they're sitting at their desk, bored at work."

Crowley says his site's name has no particular significance. In a hurry to buy a domain before NYU shut off his web space back in 1998, Crowley and a friend needed to quickly come up with a name. "We wanted Foursquare.com but it was taken. So was Wiffleball.com and Kickball.com. So we settled on Dodgeball," he explains. But that hasn't stopped people from trying to retroactively fit the name with the service. ""It's like dodgeball because you're getting hit with messages, right?' Hey, whatever works," he concedes.

For many users, Dodgeball is simply a way to coordinate an evening out. With one text, all their friends know exactly where the party is. For others, the allure is the mystery of meeting new people via "friends-of-friends," and now, via the site's new Crush List feature.

Danielle Strle, 23, admits, "I would love to know if someone who had a crush on me was nearby. As long as their postage-stamp-sized picture wasn't overtly creepy looking, I would totally stop in so they could buy me a drink."

Dodgeball launched in Philly in mid-April, but has yet to catch on the way it has in places like Chicago, San Francisco and New York, where users number over 6,000. Philadelphia, comparatively, has about 400 users.

Many of the cities where Dodgeball has really taken off are, not so coincidentally, the ones where a good deal of Crowley's own friends live. "I have friends in San Francisco and Los Angeles," he says, "so it's no secret why those cities got a kick-start. Once dedicated people start using it, it just blows up."

The technology curve also seems to complicate things. Chris Policino, 28, signed up for Dodgeball in Philadelphia when it first launched, but doesn't check in much since most of his friends can't (or won't) use the service. "For some it's not compatible with their phones' text messaging. Others just don't use text messaging."

Dodgeball certainly has the potential to be huge in Philly. Cities like Los Angeles tend to be impeded by their own geography, wherein nobody is ever ten blocks from anywhere else. But Philadelphia has plenty of little neighborhoods that lend themselves to barhopping within a ten-block radius.

The biggest key to establishing that ever-important critical mass in new cities, according to Crowley, is adoption. "You can tell people about [Dodgeball] and they're like, "Huh, that's cool.' But when you demo it and two friends walk in the door five minutes later because they were in the neighborhood, people are like "Holy shit, that's rad!'"

It will take a long time using that technique before Dodgeball can boast traffic as high as Friendster's (with over 5 million users). But one city and one barhopper at a time, the Dodgeball fan base is growing.