Bluetooth-powered network aki-aki raises small investment

Written on July 14, 2008 – 3:46 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Sometimes I dream of going to my favorite club, grab my mobile, and check who of my friends are there as well - so I won’t miss them in the dancing crowd. If I lived in Germany, this dream would be somewhere close to reality. German folks can look up their friends on aki-aki, a social network that uses bluetooth to see whose around within a distance of 20 meters. Of course I could join the English version, but there aren’t many Dutch people on the site yet. I think I’ll have to wait for such a feature on Hyves.

Anyway, enough about me. Let’s go back to aki-aki. After installing a mobile app and switching your bluetooth on, aki-aki tracks wherever you’ve been and who you’ve met. You can look up this info at the web site to see what you’ve been up to recently. Imagine you’ve ran into someone sixty times, it might be an interesting idea to meet up.

A month ago we reported they were about to receive more capital. Well, that worked out fine, as Aki-Aki has announced (translated) that they’ve received a small investment from venture capitalist Creathor Venture. The size is undisclosed. Partly due to this investment and a talented team, a diploma project at the Berlin University of Arts has grown to a real business with 16 employees.

I hope you like that post!

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aka.aki, berlin, bluetooth, creathor venture, funding, germany, social network

About the author: Ernst-Jan is blogger and co-organizer of BLOG08, who previously worked in New York to cover news at the United Nations. Next to writing, he's also a singer in the band Christina Five. Follow him on Twitter or read his personal blog Dutchproblogger.com .

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4 comments/trackbacks to “Bluetooth-powered network aki-aki raises small investment”

Jul 18, 2008: .: On Tokyo Time :. » When mobile phones become networked sensors
[...] German startup called aka-aki built a social network on top these two ideas. Your Bluetooth enabled phone tracks other phones in [...]

By Patrick de Laive on Jul 14, 2008

Bluetooth isn’t going to do the trick I’m afraid, but I think the guys from aki-aki realize that as well. Everybody is waiting for the killer app in location based services, find your friends based on bluetooth, GPS, wifi or Cell-ID, whatever info is at hand. Oh, and it should not only work at an iPhone…

[Reply]
By Alexander CASASSOVICI on Jul 15, 2008

c’mon …. Mobiluck has been doing that for ages (since 2003)….

[Reply]
By Ernst-Jan Pfauth on Jul 16, 2008

@Alexander. true, but they don’t offer the possibility to meet new people and they haven’t built such a sophisticated network around it.

[Reply]

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