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.

Bobbie Johnson of The Guardian chooses Dopplr alongside Etsy, Twitter, Moshimonsters and Seesmic as the hit websites of 2008.

We are honoured to be in such great company and will do our best to keep improving the service in the coming year. Until our official Paris launch earlier this month, the site was available by invitation only. We are very thankful for our early beta travellers, who invited their trusted friends and colleagues to join, and helped us build a useful and reliable service. Our goal is to make Dopplr the most beautiful and useful tool for intelligent travellers worldwide.

Wishing all Dopplr travellers a peaceful holiday season and happy travels in 2008!

We’re very happy to announce that Dopplr has now officially launched. Our beta period is over and now anyone can join.

Here’s the release:

Dopplr opens to all with Paris release

Paris, December 11, 2007 – Dopplr, the online service that lets frequent business travellers share travel plans with trusted colleagues and friends, is now open to travellers worldwide.

During the “beta” test period, the service was available by invitation only. The general availability arrives with valuable new features, with many more to come in the near future, and a growing base of enthusiastic users.

One active Dopplr user is Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who has called Dopplr his favorite non-Wiki Web site. He said, in a November article (http://tinyurl.com/343odm) in the Sunday New York Times Magazine: “You put in your travel schedule and link to your friends. It allows you to see where everyone is. I love it.”

Enabling coincidence, and spreading quickly

Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. For example, Dopplr might tell you that three of your trusted friends and colleagues will be in Amsterdam when you are planning to be there.

In recent months Dopplr has become an essential tool for users around the globe. Many joined the service after invitations from friends and colleagues. Others joined after Dopplr extended invitations to the travellers at the Dopplr 100 (top international companies and institutions), the Dopplr MBA 100 (leading business schools), the Dopplr NGO 100 (leading international and humanitarian organizations) and the Dopplr Premium 100 (leading fashion and luxury brands).

“We’ve worked hard to make this simple and very useful for these frequent business travellers,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO and co-founder of Dopplr at the LeWeb3 conference in Paris. “That’s why we’ve made Dopplr so easy to use and, we believe, a joy to look at. We call it beautility – combining beauty and utility on the social web into a practical pleasure.”

Extending Dopplr’s power and reach

During the beta period, the Dopplr team has kept a strong focus on the core mission: enabling connections and coincidence, and making that easy. Even as we have added a host of useful new features, we’ve put major resources into maintaining that focus while ensuring rock-solid stability for users.

Among the recent new features is a mobile-phone version — m.dopplr.com — extending the service’s core benefits. From mobile devices, members can add trips, see coincidences, and see the future travels and whereabouts of trusted colleagues and friends. Dopplr Mobile can be used with any mobile device with a modern browser including the Nokia Nseries and Nokia Eseries ranges, the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry devices.

More about Dopplr

Dopplr is the first online tool for global business travellers. Dopplr lets you share your travel plans privately with a group of friends and colleagues whom you have chosen. It then tells you when people you know will be in the same cities. It also reminds you of people who live in the places you’re planning to visit.

Dopplr works on your personal computer and mobile phone. Dopplr is easy to link with most online calendars and social networks.

Dopplr is built by an international team with deep experience in design and technology. The Guardian newspaper recently chose Dopplr as one of 10 independent Internet companies to watch. With offices in Helsinki and London, Dopplr is backed by a premier international group of investors.

For Journalists:

If you have questions, please contact us at press (at) dopplr.com.

You can also meet up with our team in Paris LeWeb3 ‘07 on 11-12th December.

It seems that the whole web world is descending on Paris this week for LeWeb3.

Most of the Dopplr team will be here too, and I’ll be speaking on a panel moderated by Jeff Clavier on Wednesday, Dec 12th at 10am. The title is “Evolution of social networks -€“ how old school is becoming new.”

Here’s a photo of a recent Dopplr moment in Monaco with Rodrigo of vpod.tv, me, Tariq of Netvibes and Martin of FON.

Over the last months it’s been great to see Dopplr grow via international travellers at the Dopplr 100 (top international companies and institutions), the Dopplr MBA 100 (leading business schools), the Dopplr NGO 100 (leading international and humanitarian organizations) and the Dopplr Premium 100 (leading fashion and luxury brands). The reason we decided to open up Dopplr this way was that we received a lot of requests from world travellers at these organizations.

Please look us up in Paris and let us know how we can keep improving Dopplr!

Today in Amsterdam at Nokia World we’ve just launched the new Dopplr mobile service m.dopplr.com. We’re also opening up the service to 25 leading mobile network companies around the world. Many thanks to all the active Dopplr travellers who have helped us test and improve m.dopplr.com.

Here’s the release:

Dopplr launches mobile service and announces the global Mobile 25

Amsterdam, Netherlands – December 4, 2007 – Dopplr, the online service service for international business travellers, today launched its mobile service - m.dopplr.com - at Nokia World. Dopplr also announced that it is opening up the service to world travellers at 25 leading mobile network companies.

m.dopplr.com extends Dopplr experience to the mobile

How does Dopplr work? Dopplr lets you share your future travel plans with a group of trusted fellow travellers whom you have chosen. It also reminds you of friends and colleagues who live in the cities you’re planning to visit. For example, Dopplr might tell you that three of your trusted friends and colleagues will be in Amsterdam when you are planning to be there.

The m.dopplr.com service extends the core benefits of Dopplr onto your mobile: you can add trips, see coincidences, and see the future travels and whereabouts of those friends and colleagues.

Dopplr Mobile can be used with any mobile device with a modern browser including the Nokia Nseries and Nokia Eseries ranges, the Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry devices.

“Our aim is to simplify the experience for socially active international travellers,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO and co-founder of Dopplr. “Dopplr is easy to use and a joy to look at. We call it beautility – combining beauty and utility on the social web. The m.dopplr.com service extends the Dopplr experience so that you can take it with you anywhere in the world.”

Announcing the Dopplr Mobile 25

To coincide with the launch of m.dopplr.com Dopplr is opening up to business travellers at 25 of the world’s leading mobile network companies including China Mobile, Vodafone, KDDI, T-Mobile, Orascom, SK Telecom.

The full list of the companies invited can be found at www.dopplr.com/mobile25.

Frequent travellers with a valid email address at one of the Dopplr Mobile 25 companies can join from that site. Once a person joins, he or she can then invite other trusted friends and colleagues to share future travels.

“The launch of m.dopplr.com is a perfect time to open up to world travellers working at mobile network companies around the world,” said Taneli Tikka, Chief Operating Officer of Dopplr. “We look forward to the many comments and suggestions from these active travellers on how to evolve the mobile experience of Dopplr.”

Currently an invitation-only network, Dopplr has attracted a global following of active business travellers. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, recently named Dopplr his “favorite non-wiki website” in The New York Times Sunday Magazine: “An invitation-only travel site. You put in your travel schedule and link to your friends. It allows you to see where everyone is. I love it.” The Guardian newspaper recently chose Dopplr as one of 10 independent Internet companies to watch. Dopplr was also highlighted, alongside Facebook, YouTube, Yahoo and Digg, as a useful Web service at the recent Nokia launch of the Ovi services brand in London.

Previously Dopplr has extended invitations to the international travellers at the Dopplr 100 (top international companies and institutions), the Dopplr MBA 100 (leading business schools), the Dopplr NGO 100 (leading international and humanitarian organizations) and the Dopplr Premium 100 (leading fashion and luxury brands).

For Journalists:
If you have questions, please contact us at press (at) dopplr (dot) com.

Today at the O’Reilly Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin we’ve just announced that we’re opening up to travellers from 100 top business schools around the world.

Anyone with a valid email at one of the Dopplr MBA 100 institutions can now join Dopplr. Just go to www.dopplr.com/mba100 to start sharing your trips.

Dopplr is now available to students, faculty members and alumni of schools for executive education, from Harvard Business School in the U.S. to Nanyang Business School in Singapore to Helsinki School of Economics in Finland.

The Dopplr MBA 100 follows on our earlier opening up of the service to business travellers at 100 major companies and international organizations. We got a very positive response to the Dopplr 100 and also many messages from business schools students and alumni, saying that Dopplr would really work for them. So, here you go!

For more background on Dopplr and its backing please see:

Dopplr Receives Funding from Premier International Team: Varsavsky, Ito, Hoffman and Klein invest in online social-travel service

The full list of the Dopplr MBA 100:

Arizona State University: Carey; Ashridge; Aston Business School; Australian Graduate School of Management; BI Norwegian School of Management; Babson Executive Education; Boston University School of Management; Bradford School of Management; Carnegie Mellon: Tepper; Catholic University of Portugal; Ceibs Center for Creative Leadership; Chinese University of Hong Kong City University: Cass; Columbia Business School; Copenhagen Business School; Coppead; Cornell; Cranfield School of Management; Drexel University: LeBow; Duke Corporate Education; EM Lyon; ESCP-EAP European School of Management; Edhec Business School; Edinbourgh University Management School; Emory University: Goizueta; Esade Business School; Essec Business School; Fundacao Dom Cabral; Fundação Instituto de Administração; Georgetown University; Georgia State University: Robinson; HEC Paris; Harvard Business School; Helsinki School of Economics; Henley Management College; Hong Kong UST; IAE Management and Business School; IE Business School; IESE Business School; IMD; Ibmec São Paulo; Imperial College London: Tanaka; INSEAD; Ipade Kelley; Executive Partners at Indiana University; Kellogg; Lancaster University Management School; London Business School; MIT: Sloan; Macquarie Graduate School of Management; Manchester Business School; McGill University; Melbourne Business School; Nanyang Business School; National Sun Yat-Sen University; National University of Singapore; Nyenrode Business Universiteit; Pennsylvania State University: Smeal; Pepperdine University: Graziadio; Purdue/Tias/CEU/GISMA; RSM Erasmus University; Rutgers Business School; SDA Bocconi; Stanford University GSB; Stockholm School of Economics; Thunderbird School of Global Management; TiasNimbas Business School; Trinity College Dublin; Trium; Tulane University: Freeman; UC Berkeley; UCLA: Anderson; Universidad Adolfo Ibanez; University College Dublin: Smurfit; University of Alberta/University of Calgary: Haskayne; University of California at Irvine: Merage; University of Cape Town; University of Chicago GSB; University of Maryland: Smith; University of Michigan: Ross; University of Minnesota: Carlson; University of North Carolina: Kenan-Flagler; University of Notre Dame: Mendoza; University of Oxford: Said; University of Pennsylvania: Wharton; University of Pittsburgh: Katz University of Pretoria: GIBS University of Texas at Austin: McCombsUniversity of Toronto: Rotman; University of Virginia: Darden; University of Western Ontario: Ivey; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Universität St.Gallen; Vlerick Leuven Gent; Warwick Business School; Washington University: Olin; West Point; Wits Business School; York University: Schulich.

Here’s some recent coverage of Dopplr in Finland, the UK and the blogs. Many thanks for all the constructive feedback we’ve received from the press, bloggers and Dopplr travellers over the last months. We’ll keep doing our best to keep improving the service while keeping it simple and beautiful.

In Finland the marketing and business press has (literally) covered us:

And The Guardian writes that “a new social network website aims to keep travellers in touch.” (Photo: Sarah Lee, Guardian)

And here are some mentions by National Geographic Traveler, alarm:clock euro and the O’Reilly Radar.