While creating the Personal Annual Report 2008 we uncovered some lovely patterns and information that make building Dopplr worthwhile. For instance we found over 250,000 possible coincidences between fellow travellers last year. That’s a quarter of a million potential dinners we could have made possible!

A lot has happened over the past few months at Dopplr HQ and there’s much more in store. We want you to know what’s happening at our company and where Dopplr is going next. Here are the highlights. You can also follow DopplrHQ on twitter.

More data back to you: The Personal Annual Report

Encouraged by the overwhelming positive feedback on the Personal Annual Report 2008 we sent out, we’re working on more ways to regularly give you back your travel data in useful and beautiful ways. If you have ideas on what data would be most useful to you please let us know.

More ways to use Dopplr via Twitter, email and other social networks

It is our goal to make it easier for you to use Dopplr wherever you want. You can already add trips to Dopplr via Twitter and email without having to visit the site. While there’s lots more to come, we’ve made shortlinks for key cities around the world so it’s easier to refer to cities in tweets, emails and status updates. Try out, for example http://dplr.it/london, http://dplr.it/helsinki, http://dplr.it/san-francisco, http://dplr.it/paris, http://dplr.it/tokyo, http://dplr.it/sydney, http://dplr.it/madrid and http://dplr.it/amsterdam

More ways to mark the past – the social atlas

One of the most frequent requests we’ve had from Dopplr travellers is for more ways to browse and annotate past trips, in particular ways to record good places to eat, stay and explore in cities around the world. Dopplr will introduce a very easy way to say that you’ve visited a restaurant, hotel or, for instance, a great local market. As you visit cities around the world, Dopplr will alert you to the places your network has been and enjoyed. We will ask for your help in building out this social atlas in the coming months. To get a sense of how this will work check out St. John in London at http://dplr.it/eat/qg01.

Looking for a person or a city on Dopplr? Search

We have just launched an improved Dopplr search. Search is a great way of finding people, cities and – as we build out the social atlas – places to eat, stay and explore. You’ll find the search bar in the top section of each page on Dopplr. Give it a try!

Strengthening the team

Finally, we’re excited that Marko Ahtisaari has joined the team as our new CEO at the beginning of the year. We’ll be using our second financing round to further improve the user experience, strengthen the team and build out the business model. In the current global economic environment we believe Dopplr is more relevant than ever as a service that helps you optimize the future and travel smarter.