Personal Informatics Post Two: Dopplr

Designed to help frequent business travelers keep track of the whereabouts of their friends, families, and colleagues, Dopplr offers an entirely private way to stay in touch geographically. You log in, identify or invite your friends, input business trips (or migrate them from an online scheduler) and you are set. Here's an excerpt from a highly favorite Time magazine feature of the outfit:

Passing through Manhattan a few years ago on my way to Miami, I left a voicemail for friends whom I'd hoped to see while I was in New York City. Two days later they left a return message saying: "Sorry we missed you. We're in Miami. Here's our hotel number." They were in the same hotel as me, one floor up. "Wow," said my friend, "that's karma."

For those who don't believe that some spiritual force throws people together, however, there's Dopplr, a website for frequent flyers that takes the luck out of meeting up. Dopplr — which launched its free public service in December — allows you to plug in all your travel plans for months ahead, and see at the click of a button which friends' and colleagues' journeys will overlap with yours. "We're against lonely travel," says Lisa Sounio, one of Dopplr's co-founders. While working as a business consultant in Helsinki, Sounio grew tired of trying to arrange meetings with peripatetic colleagues. "We found we were traveling from conference to conference, spending weeks trying to get together," she says. "Only later would we find out we'd been in the same city."

So Sounio and four other founders built the Dopplr site early last year, and invited about 500 heavy travelers from technology and media companies to road test the software. Since the Dopplr users were logging thousands of air miles a month, the site quickly became an élite spot for hyper-wired globe-trotters, many of whom are now hooked on checking each others' movements.

Although these days anyone can join that high-flying club by plugging in their travel itineraries on Dopplr, the site remains exclusive — permission to view another member's itinerary is by invitation only. "This is a high-value market, with a particular kind of lifestyle," says chief technology officer Matt Biddulph of Dopplr's membership. "This is for people who travel a lot."

Naturally, Dopplr offers both social, networking, and business benefits. By knowing people's whereabouts, you can enrich your relationships of whatever type.

I think we've all had those moments of opportunities lost -- when paths almost crossed and whatnot, and having a business solution geared toward selectively disclosing information serves to eliminate these missed opps.

No word on how they will make money, but I see a couple of logical streams, including a monthly fee for membership, potential intros a la Linked In, or highly targeted behavioral ads geared to what people are doing when. Whatever they select, Dopplr clearly offers the business traveler a way to mitigate one of the biggest challenges of her lifestyle -- getting and staying connected.

Dopplr is Helsinki based. Here's an interview with Lisa Sounion, CEO, from CMA:



She's right: the site is Nordic gorgeous.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.