Dodgeball was shut down this past week. Dodgeball was a location based social networking service that never really expanded beyond a select group in San Francisco and New York City used. You could check into locations from your phone and see where your friends were in order to join them (or avoid them). Google bought the start up, couldn't figure out what to do with it for a few years, and now it's gone.
It was a pretty cool idea until of course, Twitter came along and blew it up. If you had no friends on Dodgeball or didn't have friends you actually wanted to interact with (or stalk), it was a pretty useless service. On Twitter, you can be clever, existential or mundane and your friends can be all over the world. It's clear to see why Twitter has won that particular battle.
The sad thing is if Dodgeball had been released now, when everyone and their mom has an Internet phone, it just might have worked.
If you have a need to tell all your friends where you are and put that information on a map, there are some other options. I checked out what look to be the two biggest ones right now: Loopt and Brightkite. Loopt got in a bit of trouble with the nederati earlier last year when their iPhone 3G application spammed everyone in people's address books (oops!) but it looks like the have fixed this eroor.
If your phone has GPS and is supported by either service, it can use your phone's location and check you in (or you can manually check in if you don't feel like having it track you). You can post both services to your Twitter stream and Facebook status, although Brightkite handles this more elegantly, letting you specify what to post to your different feeds as well as having the ability to post to Flickr.
Other than that, both services appear nearly identical with one exception: Loopt Mix.
One neat thing Loopt has is "Loopt Mix" where you can potentially meet others for "networking, dating, or friendship.". In San Francisco, it's essentially a gay dating service. I don't think I'll be meeting my husband on Loopt Mix any time soon.
The question remains: will location based social networking ever really take off beyond a dedicated group of people who would be posting their whereabouts anyway? I think the only way it could ever possibly work is if it broadens its horizons (like Twitter) or give people a common reason to want to meet strangers who are in the vincinity (like gay guys looking to hook up on Loopt Mix).
Interested in location based services? Be sure to check out Vikki Chowney's post: " Hide & Seek at The Big Chill: Which Location-Based Service is Best?"