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.

Dopplr statistics:

Top 20 travel destinations

1. London
2. New York
3. San Francisco
4. Paris
5. Boston
6. Berlin (hot this week)
7. Los Angeles
8. Amsterdam
9. Washington
10. Chicago
11. Las Vegas
12. Seattle
13. Barcelona
14. Stockholm
15. Tokyo
16. Helsinki
17. Munich
18. Copenhagen
19. Portland
20. San Diego

Top 20 home cities

1. London
2. San Francisco
3. New York
4. Helsinki
5. Boston
6. Los Angeles
7. Paris
8. Seattle
9. Berlin
10. Amsterdam
11. Madrid
12. Stockholm
13. Washington
14. Chicago
15. Sydney
16. Copenhagen
17. Toronto
18. Tokyo
19. Portland
20. Munich

Top 10 companies in The Dopplr 100

Nokia
Sun
IBM
Google
Wieden+Kennedy
Cisco
BBC
Yahoo
Microsoft
IDEO
…and Poke London. With love from Dopplr.

Today we’re opening up Dopplr to frequent travellers at 100 international companies and organizations. If you have a valid email address at one of the Dopplr 100 organizations you can join at www.dopplr.com/100.

Many thanks for all the constructive feedback we’ve received from Dopplr travellers over the last months. We’re doing our best to keep improving the service while keeping it simple and beautiful.

Here’s the release:

Dopplr welcomes business travellers from 100 major enterprises
Amsterdam – September 26, 2007. Dopplr, the online service for frequent world travellers today announced that it will open up its invitation-only social network to business travellers from 100 leading companies and international organizations.

The list of invited organizations includes international businesses, top brands and cool challengers as well as not-for-profits. Among them are Google, Unicef, IBM, Wieden + Kennedy, Virgin, Louis Vuitton, The Economist, Apple, McKinsey & Company, and Nokia.

“We’ve gotten great feedback from existing Dopplr travellers at many of these international companies,” said Matt Biddulph, CTO and co-founder of Dopplr, speaking at Picnic, Cross-Media week in Amsterdam. “Their feedback helped convince us to open up the service to a larger group of business travellers.”

The full list of the international companies and organizations can be seen at www.dopplr.com/100. Frequent travellers with a valid email address at one of the Dopplr 100 organizations can join from that site. Once a person joins, he or she can then invite other trusted friends and colleagues to share future travels.

“Dopplr is the first site for business travellers who want to share their trips with their international networks of friends and colleagues,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO and co-founder. “We help them discover they’ll be in the same place on the same day, and many of them prefer a dinner conversation with old friends, to an evening of room service and email. We know we prefer it.”

A simple, relevant service for active world travellers

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 Barcelona when you are planning to be there.

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

Lead investor Martin Varsavsky believes in the simple execution of this idea: ”Dopplr is like the iPod of social networks. It is very valuable to know where your friends and colleagues will be and where in the world you will meet them next. This is the one thing that Dopplr does really well.”

For more information contact:
Lisa Sounio, CEO email: press at dopplr dot com

The list of the Dopplr 100:
180Amsterdam AKQA Accenture Adobe Amazon Apple Art Basel Aston Martin Audi BBC BBDO Argentina BMW Blizzard Blyk Bob Helsinki Bruce Mau Design Camper Centaur Media Cisco Citibank Clinton Global Initiative Conde Nast Traveller Contagious Continuum Creative Commons Creative technologies Crispin Porter + Bogursky Deloitte Droga5 Ebay Electronic Arts Facebook Fallon London Financial Times Freitag Goldman Sachs Google HSBC Hakuhodo Haymarket Publications Hubert Burda Media IBM ICANN IDEO Infosys Intel International Herald Tribune JPMorgan JWT Jump Associates KPMG Kessels Kramer Kone LG LVMH Lenovo LinkedIn Louis Vuitton MUJI McKinsey Media Republic MediaCatalyst Microsoft Modernista Mother MySQL Naked New York Times Nike Nokia OECD Oakley Ogilivy Toronto Open society institute Opera Oracle Outblaze Peacock Poke Procter & Gamble Pöyry Red Bull Rediff Robert/Boisen & Like-minded Samsung Sony Ericsson Splendid Strawberryfrog Sun TBWA Taivas The Economist The Guardian ThoughtWorks UPM Unesco Unicef United Nations Virgin Group Voxiva W+K WPP Washington Post William Morris Agency Winkreative Wipro Wired Yahoo

We’re excited to announce that Taneli Tikka has joined Dopplr as Chief Operating Officer. With his experience in building and scaling social media businesses, Taneli is a great addition to our international team.

For those of you that may not know him, Taneli is a serial entrepreneur, business executive and deal-maker, with deep experience in the technology world. He has headed 6 companies, and chaired or held board seats in 13.

Before joining Dopplr, Taneli was CEO and a major shareholder in Dynamoid Ltd the company behind IRC-Galleria, Finland’s largest social media and networking site, where he led the company to rapid growth and financial success. In the spring of 2007, IRC-Galleria was purchased by Sulake Corporation, the parent company of Habbo Hotel.

Taneli’s other recent experience includes a senior role at Magenta, an international hosting and infrastructure services company. Magenta was for a long time the only infrastructure services provider for Habbo Hotel and kept it running globally. Other customers included major consumer sites.

Taneli holds an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from Helsinki School of Economics, where he graduated first in his class in 2004. He continues to be fascinated by Internet culture and gaming. Taneli’s many hobbies include scuba diving, firearms training, and martial arts. He also holds a skydiver license from his service in the Finnish Army.

An active world traveller, Taneli has made it a tradition to spend New Year’s Day in warm tropical locations!

We’re very happy to announce that Dopplr has secured early-stage financing. Having this international group of active Dopplr users now joining us as strategic investors is tremendously exciting. Here’s the release:

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

Helsinki, Finland – September 4, 2007 – Dopplr, the online social service for frequent world travellers, has secured early-stage financing from an international group of experienced Internet investors.

The investors are Martin Varsavsky, Joichi Ito, Reid Hoffman and The Accelerator Group led by Saul Klein. This international team—frequent travellers who themselves use Dopplr—has separately made previous investments in many successful Internet companies, including Last.fm, Joost, FON, LinkedIn, Flickr, Technorati, Wikia, Xing, Stardoll, Six Apart and Netvibes.

“We’re gratified that so many world travellers have already found value in Dopplr,” said Lisa Sounio, CEO of Dopplr. “Having this international group of active Dopplr users now joining us as strategic investors is tremendously exciting. Martin, Saul, Joichi and Reid have a great sense of business, technology, design and travel.”

Investor Martin Varsavsky said: “We chose to invest in Dopplr because of the strong team and the simple execution of a great idea. Dopplr is like the iPod of social networks. It is very valuable to know where your friends and colleagues will be and where in the world you will meet them next. This is the one thing that Dopplr does really well.”

How does Dopplr work? Dopplr lets you, via an invitation system, 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 Barcelona when you are there next.

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.

About Dopplr

Dopplr is an online service for frequent travellers. It was created by an international team of world travellers. 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. In general, people will find Dopplr valuable if they travel more than five times a year or have friends who do as well.

Currently open by invitation only, Dopplr has spread quickly. To date, Dopplr travellers have shared over 110 million kilometers (70 million miles) of trips to over 2000 cities around the world with their close friends and colleagues.

Dopplr’s founders are: Lisa Sounio, chief executive officer; Matt Biddulph, chief technology officer; Matt Jones, design director; and Dan Gillmor, founding traveller. Marko Ahtisaari is a founding investor.

About the Investors

Martin Varsavsky: The Argentine/Spanish entrepreneur has founded seven companies in the past 20 years. They include Jazztel Telecomunicaciones, Spain’s second largest publicly traded telecom operator, and Ya.com, Spain’s third largest internet web site/DSL provider that includes the second largest Spanish language web agency www.viajar.com. His current venture is FON, founded in November in 2005, a community-empowered company dedicated to building the world’s largest global WiFi network in a bottom-up way; FON’s partners include Skype, eBay and Google. Martin also works in a variety of nonprofit activities, including his management of the Varsavsky Foundation best known as founder of two large educational projects in Latin America, Educ.ar (Argentina) and EducarChile (Chile) and the Safe Democracy Foundation.

Joichi Ito: Another longtime Internet entrepreneur, Joichi Ito is a co-founder and board member of Digital Garage and the CEO of Neoteny. He is the Chairman of Creative Commons. He is on the board of Technorati and helps run Technorati Japan. He is the Chairman of Six Apart Japan, the weblog software company. He is the board of a number of non-profit organizations the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and WITNESS. He has created numerous Internet companies including PSINet Japan and Infoseek Japan. He has served and continues to serve on numerous Japanese central as well as local government committees and boards, advising the government on IT, privacy and computer security related issues.

Reid Hoffman: The founder of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking service with millions of active users, Reid is now chairman and president, products, driving product and business strategy. Before founding LinkedIn he was Executive Vice President of PayPal, which eBay purchased for $1.5 billion in 2002. Reid also has held management roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software Corporation and Apple. He’s invested in numerous Internet startups, with a focus on consumer-oriented companies, and is on the board of directors at SixApart and the Mozilla Corporation.

Saul Klein: Currently living in London, where he is a venture partner with Index Ventures, Saul has started or had a major hand in many Internet and technology ventures. They include Skype, where he was global vice president of marketing and e-commerce; Video Island, where he was CEO, recently merged with LoveFilm to become Europe’s leading online DVD rental and movie download service. He was also a founding partner of The Accelerator Group, where he was an active seed investor in both US and European start-ups including Moo.com, SpotRunner, Edgeio, Daylife, Stardoll and Last.fm. Saul held management positions at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond within the Web Platform Services Group; served as the senior vice president for Firefly Network (acquired by Microsoft), and was director of digital communication at WPP’s Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide. He currently serves on the board of directors of bridges.org, an international non-profit which works to promote the effective use of information and communications technology in developing countries.

For Journalists:

If you have questions, please contact us at press at dopplr dot com. (If you want an invite to Dopplr, to try it out for yourself, just ask.)