We’ve made dedicated shortlinks for key cities around the world so it’s easy to refer to them in tweets, emails and status updates. For major cities just use the city name after http://dplr.it/ and use “-” instead of a space in the name.

Try, for example:
http://dplr.it/london
http://dplr.it/new-york
http://dplr.it/helsinki
http://dplr.it/san-francisco
http://dplr.it/paris
http://dplr.it/sydney
http://dplr.it/madrid
http://dplr.it/amsterdam

Similarly, places to eat and stay in cities have shortlinks. See, for example http://dplr.it/eat/r8i0 and http://dplr.it/stay/kxh0 in London.

It is our goal to make it easier for you to use Dopplr wherever you want. While we mentioned Twitter briefly in our recent Dopplr update, we wanted to say some more about how you can use Twitter and Dopplr together.

You can add trips easily on Dopplr using a Twitter account

There’s a special Dopplr user on Twitter that is there only to receive messages from you, which then get turned into trips on Dopplr. To use this feature you’ll need to first tell Dopplr your Twitter account. Then, you can send it a message by twittering something like “D dopplr a trip to Helsinki on May 19th until May 23rd”, or you can also use the “@dopplr” prefix if you don’t mind the details being seen in ‘public’ on twitter.

What to say

Start your message with “d dopplr” (to send it in private) or “@dopplr” (so it appears in your Twitter timeline). Make sure to mention a placename and two dates, including the month both times. Use one of these three forms of text to be sure we can understand you:

A trip to Helsinki on May 19 to May 23

At SFO on September 9th. Leaving on September 20th

I’m going to Austin on July 15 for 3 nights

Your Twitter contacts on Dopplr

You can easily check if your Twitter contacts are on Dopplr so that you can share trips with them.

Lastly, remember that the special Dopplr user on Twitter is just a bot. If you want to hear about new developments on Dopplr and the Dopplr team, follow @dopplrhq.

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.

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!

The technology world is once again gathering in Paris this week for LeWeb’08 as is clear from the map above. The circles represent the places from which world travellers on Dopplr are coming to Paris. If you’d like to stay in touch with other participants after the event join the Dopplr LeWeb’08 group.

Congratulations to Geraldine and Loic Le Meur for putting together an impressive event that includes a Finnish Sauna! (via Thomas Crampton)

Today we’re announcing a new addition to the Dopplr team. Marko Ahtisaari will be joining us as CEO, while Lisa Sounio will continue on the board as Chairman. We’re very excited about this news. For the details, here’s our press release in full:

Dopplr appoints Marko Ahtisaari as CEO

London and Helsinki, 8 December 2008 - Dopplr, the online service for smarter travel, today announced it has appointed Marko Ahtisaari as CEO, effective January 1st 2009. Co-founder and founding CEO Lisa Sounio will become Chairman, alongside fellow board members Tyler Brûlé and Saul Klein.

Saul Klein, investor and board member said: “Since launching to a select group of global companies last fall, Dopplr has attracted an international following of smart travellers. I want to thank Lisa for her fine work in launching Dopplr. As a founding investor Marko knows the team well and with his background in mobile services and media is an excellent fit to grow the business.”

Marko Ahtisaari has worked previously as Director of Design Strategy at Nokia and serves on the board of directors of F-Secure and Artek. Most recently Ahtisaari has been Head of Brand & Design at Blyk, the free mobile network for young people funded by advertising, and will continue in a role supporting Blyk in its partnering and expansion strategy.

Marko Ahtisaari said: “Nearly two years ago, one evening in London, the Dopplr idea of smarter travel was born. Today, Dopplr is an important intention sharing service online, akin to social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but with a tight focus. When people share their travel plans and tips through Dopplr their mind is already set on the travel experience: on where their colleagues and friends are going, how they’re getting there and what hotels they’re staying at. They are interested in buying travel services based on the recommendation of their network. 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 2008 Dopplr announced its second financing round from a group of prominent international investors — all users of the service. The investors include Esther Dyson, Tyler Brûlé, Thomas Glocer, Yat Siu, Aditya dev Sood, Lars Hinrichs, Joshua Schachter, Brian Behlendorf, Daniel Sachs, Joshua Cooper Ramo, and Azeem Azhar. Saul Klein, who invested in this round, also invested in the previous round together with Martin Varsavsky, Reid Hoffman and Joichi Ito.

About Dopplr

Dopplr is the online service for smarter travel. Dopplr helps you make the most of your trips by sharing your travel plans with the 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 personal computer or mobile phone. It links with many popular online calendars and social networks.

After a period of exclusive availability to selected global companies, Dopplr opened to world travellers everywhere in December 2007. Dopplr has offices on London’s Silicon Roundabout and the Helsinki seaside. www.dopplr.com

ENDS

Media enquiries:
press@dopplr.com
www.dopplr.com/main/press
Photo of Marko Ahtisaari by Joi Ito from the Wikimedia Commons

April was an intense month for the Dopplr team with our Milan release launching both boutique hotel bookings and the ability to calculate the carbon impact of your travels. Many thanks for the all the feedback and improvement ideas we’ve received.

Now we’d like to look forward with the Dopplr Mid-2008 Travel Outlook. Where next? The image above shows where the growing Dopplr community (in the aggregate) will be travelling from May to September this year.

The top 20 city destinations are New York, London, San Francisco, Paris, Las Vegas, Chicago, Berlin, Washington, Los Angeles, Boston, Barcelona, Portland, Seattle, Amsterdam, Rome, Tokyo, Copenhagen, Dublin, Toronto and Stockholm. (To see the city pages you’ll need to sign in to Dopplr.)

Compared to the other months of the year, big movers and new entries in the top 100 destination for Mid-2008 were: Venice (jumping up 47 places), Lisbon (41 places), Budapest (39 places) and Montreal (26 places). Nice, Cannes, Florence, Athens and Black Rock City (home of Burning Man) all enter the top 100 for Mid-2008.

London continues to be the most populated “home city” on Dopplr with other cities closing in. The top destinations Londoners will be visiting in Mid-2008 are: Paris, New York, San Francisco, Dublin, Amsterdam, Berlin, Barcelona, Helsinki, Los Angeles, Stockholm, Lisbon, Singapore, Brussels, Munich, and Rome.

The summer months of the northern hemisphere are clearly a time for international travel. The percentage of international trips is 54% in May-September (compared to 46% during the rest of the year).

Finally a prediction: the Dopplr end-of-year travel outlook will see New Delhi, Bangalore, Shanghai and Beijing rising up in the top destinations!

We’ve launched a new partnership to help you find and book excellent lodging during your travels. We’re working with the boutique hotel experts at Mr & Mrs Smith, and you’ll now have direct access from your Dopplr itineraries to their unrivalled insider knowledge, global hotel collection and booking services.

If you’re familiar with Mr & Mrs Smith, you know that they’re known for deep research into high-quality accommodation. They offer the best room rates on everything from quirky city stays and romantic boutique retreats to stylish country manors and luxury spa hotels. And they tried every place they recommend, to be sure it meets their standard.

Here’s a quick screencast that shows you what you can expect to see when you add a trip to a city covered by Mr & Mrs Smith:

And thanks to TechCrunch UK for their kind words: “It looks like it’ll be right up the Dopplrati’s street”

Today, we’re excited to announce the “Singapore” release of Dopplr. Matt Jones will be speaking at the World Effie Festival starting tomorrow in Singapore. The inaugural event brings together more than 2,000 business leaders, global agency heads, creatives, brand owners, and marketing professionals. For more on the “The Coming Ad Revolution” take a look at Esther Dyson’s column featuring Dopplr in The Wall Street Journal.

The Dopplr “Singapore” release focuses on three key improvements:

1. More Happy Coincidences
Dopplr now informs you of “nearby” and “near-miss” coincidences. You can see when someone adds a trip to a place near where you’ll be, and see who you’ll just miss by a day or two. Anytime you coincide with someone you can send them email by simply clicking on the “Send email?” link on the trip page. Dopplr will then send the email on your behalf and you can take it from there. We hope that both these features will help you get more out of your trips.

2. Adding trips easier than ever with calendar imports
Many heavy travellers have requested that Dopplr should automatically import future trips from electronic calendars. This is now possible. For example if you use Google Calendar you can now set-up Dopplr to “listen” to your calendar and add future trips automatically. See this blog post for more.

3. Local intelligence: tips on hotels, restaurants and unique experiences
Many Dopplr travellers have discovered the tips feature allowing you to share tips on hotels, restaurants and unique experiences in cities you know well. If you have tips you would like to share just go to the corresponding city page and click the tips tab to get started.

Thank you for your continued support and feedback. Over the next months we will continue building Dopplr into a beautiful and essential service for intelligent travellers worldwide.

The European edition of Time Magazine that goes on sale today has a story on Dopplr entitled “Let’s Do Lunch in London.”

“If karma isn’t quite working out for you,” writes Vivienne Walt. “Dopplr could be the next best thing.”

Check out the full story in the print edition or online here: TIME Magazine on Dopplr: Let’s Do Lunch in London.