Dodgeball

Text your location to a short code and find your friends nearby: the check-in before Foursquare, bought by Google in 2005 and abandoned in 2009

Shut down
19902026

Dodgeball was a location-based social network for mobile phones created by Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert in New York, growing out of a 2000 website and Crowley's NYU ITP project: users texted where they were to Dodgeball, which broadcast it to friends and replied with friends, friends of friends and crushes within ten blocks. Google acquired it on 11 May 2005; the founders left in April 2007; Google announced its discontinuation on 14 January 2009 and replaced it with Google Latitude, and it closed in early 2009.

Timeline [edit]

  1. 2000
  2. 2000 other
    dodgeball.com starts as a city guide
  3. 2003
  4. 2003 Launch
    SMS Dodgeball

    Check in by text; friends and crushes within ten blocks.

  5. 2005
  6. 11 May 2005 Acquisition
    Google buys Dodgeball
  7. 2007
  8. 12 April 2007 other
    Founders quit Google

    "Dodgeball forever!!!!"

  9. 2009
  10. 14 January 2009 Shutdown announced
    Google says Dodgeball will be discontinued
  11. February 2009 Shutdown
    Dodgeball goes dark
  12. 4 February 2009 other
    Google Latitude launches as the replacement
  13. 11 March 2009 other
    Foursquare launches

    Crowley's second check-in service.

The site through time

Browse dodgeball.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Full archive →

Ownership [edit]

Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert 2003–2005 Founded From dodgeball.com (2000) and an NYU ITP thesis
Google 2005–2009 Acquisition Undisclosed sum; founders left April 2007

Why it shut down [edit]

Official line: Google bought Dodgeball in May 2005, gave it almost no engineers, and its founders quit in April 2007 calling the experience "incredibly frustrating". On 14 January 2009 Vic Gundotra announced that dodgeball.com would be discontinued "in the next couple of months"; Google Latitude, launched on 4 February 2009 inside Google Maps, took its place, and the service went dark that winter.

Our analysis: Dodgeball had the idea, an SMS check-in that told your friends where you were and told you which friends and crushes were within ten blocks, four years before the iPhone made it obvious. Google bought the idea and the two people, then let it sit; the founders left, one of them built Foursquare from the same design in 2009, and Eric Schmidt later said Google had "screwed up" by not investing. It is the standard example of an acquisition killing what it bought.

History [edit]

Ten blocks

Dennis Crowley started dodgeball.com in 2000 as a city guide, and rebuilt it with Alex Rainert as his 2003 thesis project at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program into something new: a service you used entirely by text message. You sent "@ Luna Lounge" to Dodgeball's number and it told your friends where you were, told you if any of them, or their friends, or someone you had marked as a crush, had checked in within ten blocks, and let venues and photos hang off the check-in. It spread through New York's bars and then to a couple of dozen cities, on the flip phones and Sidekicks of the day, and it invented the vocabulary that Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places would use.

Google

Google bought Dodgeball on 11 May 2005, its first mobile social acquisition, and Crowley and Rainert moved to Mountain View. Little happened. On 12 April 2007 Crowley posted a photograph titled "me + alex quit google (dodgeball forever!!!!)" and wrote that they had been unable to convince Google that Dodgeball was worth engineering resources while other start-ups innovated in mobile and social. Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai launched Foursquare, a check-in service with points and mayorships, in March 2009.

On 14 January 2009 Google's Vic Gundotra announced, in a post that also killed Jaiku development and Google Mashup Editor, that Dodgeball would be discontinued in the next couple of months, and on 4 February 2009 Google Latitude, a friend-locating layer inside Google Maps, launched as its replacement; dodgeball.com went dark that winter. In August 2010 Eric Schmidt told reporters that Google remembered Dodgeball "quite well" and had learned from failing to invest in it. Latitude itself closed in 2013.

The domain today

dodgeball.com is not the service; the name is used by others.

Similar projects

MySpace A place for friends 2003–now Friendster The social network that came first 2002–2015 Google+ The social network everyone was signed up to and nobody used 2011–2019 Yik Yak Anonymous, local, and impossible to moderate 2013–2017 Miiverse Nintendo's hand-drawn social network 2012–2017 Orkut Brazil's living room, built in a 20% project 2004–2014

Sources [edit]

  1. Google buys Dodgeball Engadget 12 May 2005 [archived]
  2. Disgruntled Dodgeball founders leave Google InfoWorld 16 April 2007
  3. Dodgeball founders quit Google Laughing Squid 19 April 2007 [archived]
  4. Changes for Jaiku and farewell to Dodgeball and Mashup Editor Google Code Blog 14 January 2009 [archived]
  5. Google axes Dodgeball, Jaiku, Video and more TechCrunch 14 January 2009
  6. Google kills off several products Google Blogoscoped 15 January 2009 [archived]
  7. Perhaps not fondly, Google's Schmidt remembers Dodgeball "quite well" TechCrunch 5 August 2010 [archived]

Last verified: 18 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).