謝至恩
Google 宣佈將關閉包括 Dodgeball 在內的 6 項線上服務，這項於 2005 年被 Google 併購的行動社交網路服務－Dodgeball，其創辦人之一的 Dennis Crowley 也隨著加入 Google，並於 2007 年 5 月離開 Google，表示將於 2009 年 3 月 SXSW 大會之前重新「複製」一個類似 Dodgeball 的服務。
向來稱為 Four Square 的 Dennis Crowley 在部落格中當中寫道：
Alex called me late last night with the news (which then spread like nerd-wildfire thru Lock’s bday party).
Is anyone really surprised? Google clearly didn’t care about dodgball while we were there and there hasn’t been a full-time engineer working on dodgeball since we left (back in May 2007!). It’s been great to have Harry keeping an eye on it since we left, so you can so you can thank him / buy him a whiskey for bringing it back to life all those times. 🙂
You know, Alex and I kind of selfishly built dodgeball for our friends in NYC (classic Shirky Situated Software). We tried build something that would make our Thursday nights more interesting and it just so happened that it worked pretty well and that a whole bunch of other people in other cities wanted to play too. So thanks for that… and I’ll always be thankful all the good times and new friends that came out of the glory days of dodgeball (SXSW 06, anyone?)
So what’s next? Well I don’t know how many days we have left (30 days? 90 days?), but I’ve always said that it Google ever kills dodgeball, I’l build you guys a new one, so stayed tuned. (some of you know that me + Naveen have been cooking up some new stuff which is looking kind of hot). We’ll hustle to get something for everyone to play with at SXSW. (And really Google? You couldn’t wait till the end of ski season to kill it??)
And just on a sidenote, the whole mobile + social space is still pretty open. Even, what?, 5 years after Alex and I launched dball in April 2004, no one is really doing anything new. Sure, Brightkite showed us “Place Snap” and Loopt’s rocking “Mixx” (ha!), but no one is really thinking about this space beyond just “Twitter with whereabouts”… so maybe Naveen and I can take a stab at fixing that. 🙂
ps: Hey Google, can I have the domain back please? Even just for my personal email? Pleeeaaasseeee?
看得出 Dennis Crowley 對 Dodgeball 的熱愛，仍然希望取回 dodgeball 的網域名稱，好讓自己能夠繼續使用 dodgeball 作為電子郵件名稱。