Archive of thenextweb.com
Written on 9th December 2008
2 COMMENTS 
Zee, Editor in Chief at The Next Web, Principal at WeDoCreative.
Dopplr is a London/Finland based online service designed to let people who travel frequently know when their friends/colleagues will be traveling to the same area they’re traveling to or live in.
On January 1st Marko Ahtisaari, Dopplr’s founding investor, is to become the startup’s full time CEO. Current CEO, Lisa Sounio will remain with the company as chairman of the board and divide her time between her other company, design strategy and PR agency Sonay.
Ahtisaari initially met Dopplr co-founder Matt Jones as director of design strategy for Nokia. He was then appointed Head of Brand & Design at Blyk, ad-funded mobile network, and will continue in an advisory role for the company.
Ahtisaari says:
“Nearly two years ago, one evening in London, the Dopplr idea of smarter travel was born. I’m delighted to be joining the team as we move forward with our vision of smarter travel for the growing Dopplr community worldwide.”
In September Dopplr announced its second financing round from a group of prominent international investors as well as original high profile investors Saul Klein of Seedcamp, serial entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky, Reid Hoffman of Linkedin and prolific investor/activist Joi Ito.
Written on 21st November 2008
0 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I just received a line from Sarah Kapoor. She’s a film editor and together with a friend who works as a developer for Autotext, she created the Dopplr for Facebook. Kapoor and her friend are both hardcore travelers and missed the opportunity to meet up with out-of-town friends simply and keep up with friends’ travel plans.
Where are you with New Year’s Eve?
With inTown, you can add trips and see which of your friends are in the same town. As Kapoor describes:
Going home for Thanksgiving? So is Jane, John and Joe. Planning a trip to New York for New Years? Looks like Jack will be there too. Jane saw you post your trip to New York and wants to go, too.
Dopplr app not as sophisticated
Dopplr has been built with a similar goal, though it’s more business-oriented. Their Facebook app works just fine for sharing trips, but isn’t that sophisticated when it comes to comparing your plans with those of your friends.
Moreover, inTown might be more suitable for the masses. People are used to installing Facebook apps, going through the Dopplr routine is a whole different ball-game though.
Start me up
InTown isn’t really interesting yet, as few people use the service. None of my friends have it installed yet so I can only use it to brag. Let’s see whether the app gets viral.
By the way, unlike Jack, I’m in London for New Year’s eve. Drop me a line if you want to meet up.
Written on 17th September 2008
10 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Dopplr got a rather spectacular injection of money recently – adding names like Saul Klein to their financial backers. It meant a new episode in an online travel battle, where Dopplr shows power play – they have the celebrities behind them – and Tripit tries to seduce you with innovative travel-adding technologies.
But in the end, it all comes down to the viral effect of their services. If your friends are on one travel site, you aren’t likely to register on the other. So badges are vital. Dopplr already offered a public profile and widgets for a while, and now Tripit has added a blog widget to their arsenal as well.
The travel sites choose a completely different style. Ok, they both have the impressive statistics thing going on (as long as you travel a lot, of course), but where Dopplr seems to choose for cool maps and a visually appealing app, Tripit goes for simplicity and a RSS feed:
So.., after reading this post, have you decided how to show of your traveling?
Written on 15th September 2008
10 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Online network for frequent business travellers Dopplr has raised new funding from a group of angel investors in a second financing round. The undisclosed round makes the list of Dopplr backers even more impressive than it already was: Martin Varsavsky, Reid Hoffman and Joichi Ito were some of the initial seed investors, while Saul Klein from The Accelerator Group invested in both rounds.
Now you can add the following familiar names to that list: Esther Dyson, Tyler Brûlé, Thomas Glocer, Yat Siu,Aditya dev Sood, Lars Hinrichs, Joshua Schachter, Brian Behlendorf, Ami Hasan, Daniel Sachs, Joshua Cooper Ramo, Kim Weckström, and Azeem Azhar.
Dopplr helps you make the most of your trips by sharing your travel plans with people and brands you trust.
The service then highlights coincidences, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Tokyo when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your PC or on the go, and links with many popular online calendars and social networks.
Dopplr expects to use this new round of financing to expand its business globally. Currently, Dopplr’s user base is mostly in Europe and the U.S.
(Hat tip to ReadWriteWeb)
Written on 5th September 2008
3 COMMENTS
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer
Friday Flashbacks is a new article series we’re going to try and establish here on The Next Web blog, in which we look back at what happened in this week one year ago. The aim is to get some insight in what had us – “us” being tech bloggers in general – buzzing last year, and if all that noise was worth it or not.
So where does last year’s buzz stand now?
September 2, 2007 – Google was rumored to launch a mobile payment service (”GPay”) after it filed a patent that suggested something like that. Nothing has come from it yet, but then again, Android is just now making its way to the mobile industry so there may still be a killer mobile app just waiting to be released into the wild.
September 4, 2007 – Dopplr, an online service that lets you share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleagues, hadn’t launched publicly yet, but it raised early-stage financing of an undisclosed amount from Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein. Meanwhile, Dopplr opened to the public and keeps on adding nice features, but we’re not sure if it’s getting massive adoption in the world of frequent travellers or not, since it’s been a while since they’ve shared numbers.
September 4, 2007 – Cuill (with double L back then) was still in super stealth mode but rumors were swirling: Google was said to have already made a buy-out offer, and the company would well be acquired before launching etc. Well, Cuil launched with much fanfare and little acclaim. Supposedly a Google killer, users went on to mock the new service for days on end for not returning the right search results and pictures of other people when doing name searches. The buzz swiftly went away, and the latest report on the company says that its indexing bot kills websites. Ouch.
September 5, 2007 – Microsoft launched Silverlight, its browser-plugin / Flash rival. Silverlight is evidently still trailing Adobe by a long shot, but the Redmond giant has time to sit this one out, and some cool stuff is being built with it. Meanwhile, some go as far as saying it’s actually evil and MS is returning to its wicked ways from the past. The recently launched Google browser Chrome / Javascript could pose somewhat of a threat to its future, according to some. To be continued!
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
