Groups on Dopplr: Stage #1 – Company Groups
Over the summer we’ve been working hard to create Groups on Dopplr.
There will be a few stages to this, and the first we’re ready to introduce is the groups feature for companies and corporations, which we launched at dConstruct08.
Overall – groups are a way to share trips with people who might not be in your Dopplr network yet, but would share a common interest around the trips you place in those groups. Specifically, in this first stage of our roll-out of groups, that common interest equates to the companies we work for.
What do I mean?
Well – imagine the trip as a “social object” you can place into a group for anyone who is a member of that group to see. For instance, say I worked for SuperDuperBigCo, and was going on a business trip to Tokyo.
Everyone in my Dopplr network would see the trip as per usual – but if I chose to place the trip in the SuperDuperBigCo group then anyone in the group could see it, including members of the group who I don’t share trips with currently.
So, coincidences with other SuperDuperBigCo staff who have placed their trips to Toyko in the group would be highlighted to me, even if I don’t yet share trips with that colleague.
Discovering someone else from my company is going to be there might make my trip more productive, more fun – or both!
It might even mean I change my trip to make it more valuable if I was going on company business, or, in some cases it might mean I discover I don’t have to travel at all.
We think that company groups are a pretty powerful tool for optimising travel.
You certainly don’t have to put every trip into a group, for instance, personal trips; but you can opt to make placing a trip into a group or groups your default setting – which might save you time if most of your travel is on company business.
The group ‘home’ has an overview of the individual activity and trips placed with the group, and also has some other interesting features based on the aggregate behaviour of the group.
For instance: group carbon (calculated by aggregating information from those in the group who have declared their carbon profile sharable), a ‘raumzeitgeist’ view of the group’s travels, an upcoming trip activity ’seismograph’ and a historical chart of top destinations of the group.
We’ll be adding more features and data-toys over time. If there’s anything you think would be particularly useful to you as a group, do let us know on our Get Satisfaction Forum.
Here’s a screenshot of our (i.e. Dopplr Ltd’s) group home.
You might have received a message from us over the weekend if you’re registered with Dopplr with an email address belonging to one of the companies we’ve created a group for.
The initial list of companies is below – we’ve based it on the Dopplr100 list that we created last year, but if your company would like a group, let us know.
When you visit the company group page, we’ll ask you to verify you have a valid email address belonging to the company.
Don’t worry if your Dopplr account isn’t registered with that email address – as long as you can receive a validation code at your company email address it’s fine.
More on groups in the coming weeks… Stay tuned!
List of Dopplr company groups as of 15th September 2008
Accenture
ACM
Adobe
Agency.com
AKQA
Alcatel-Lucent
AMEE
Apple
Arup
Avenue A | Razorfish
BBC
BCG
BearingPoint
Blyk
Boeing
BT
Cap Gemini
Cisco
Credit Suisse
Dare Digital
dConstruct
Dell
Deloitte
Digitas
Dopplr
EA
Edelman
Elsevier
Ericsson
Ernst & Young
Fjord
Forrester
Frog Design
GE
Get Satisfaction
glue
Google
The Guardian
HP
Hubert Burda Media
IBM
ICANN
IDEO
Intel
J.P. Morgan
JWT
London Business School
McKinsey
Method
Microsoft
MIT Alumni
Moo
MySQL
Nike
Nokia
Nokia Siemens Networks
Novell
O’Reilly
Ogilvy
Open Society Institute / Soros Foundations Network
Oracle
Orange / France Telecom Group
Outblaze
Philips
Poke
Procter & Gamble
Profero
Redmonk
Reuters
SAP
Schlumberger
Siemens
Skype
Sony Ericsson
Stanford Alumni
Sun Microsystems
Tata Communications
ThoughtWorks
Tinker.it
Vodafone
Weber Shandwick
Wieden + Kennedy
Yahoo!
Well, I’ve asked you (as a company) for this approximately a year ago. We even met together to discuss similar features, like this but augmented a bit with others. I blogged on it last February (!):
“In my opinion, go for the corporate market. Yes, I know, but please bear with me. The should offer corporations a specific set of features exclusive to their company’s employees. The main ones I have in mind would be to get in touch with other, but unknown, employees, while traveling (or at home when others are traveling). Picture this: you’re a young and recent employee of a global organization, stuck for the week-end somewhere you don’t know anyone. But it’s a big location of your company, so you know there are others also there. A tool that lets you signal you’re there and ready to go for lunch/dinner/skiing/whatever with other employees would bring everyone a lot of value.”
Full post: http://www.macroprinciples.com/2008/02/dopplr-and-tripit-next-gen-strategies-part-2/
So, a little acknowledgement would have been, not required, for sure, but a nice gesture.
What is really sad, though, is to not even see Schlumberger (company I work for) on the Dopplr 100 list, even as we were amongst the most adamant to use a feature like this.
Not being considered sexy enough to make the Dopplr 100, I don’t really care, but being consistently dismissed is somewhat mystifying. Is disdainful arrogance the Dopplr doctrine ? I don’t think so, but yet, facts are facts.
And yes, please take this comment as a request to have the groups feature enabled for us.
Julien,
My apologies and I’m sorry we’ve annoyed you. After our discussions we of course had your company in mind while creating this feature and there was a group for you right from the start. Unfortunately the list used in this blog post was outdated and we missed you off. We’ve fixed it now, and I’d encourage everyone to read your blog post for some interesting thinking.
Matt.
I’ve updated the list – my mistake, and apologies for the omission Julien.
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I was just thinking about how i could use dopplr our group of disparate traveling activists and I was thinking how great it would be if you guys implemented a groups feature. Well lo and behold…I guess great minds think alike.
However I noticed that you’re only doing this for companies. When it will be available for public interest groups that may not necessarily be connected through a common address?
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It will be nice to have a groups for the Amateur radio enthusiasts. Hamradios are traveling a lot, expecially to unusual destination.
Why not?
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