Jyri Engeström , Ditto.me : Find out what your friends are up to

Jyri is founder and CEO of Ditto. Jyri was the Senior product Manager of Internet Handhelds at Nokia before he cofounded Jaiku, which grew into the leading European microblogging service and was acquired by Google in 2007. At Google Jyri was Product Manager of mobile applications including Mobile Calendar and the Gmail Mobile client, and started up social products including Google Buzz, Google Profiles, and Google Latitude. 

Jyri is an advisor/angel investor in companies such as Applifier, Betabrand, and Mobclix. A sociologist by training, he is noted for coining the term ‘social object’ to refer to photos, bookmarks, and other shareable Web content. He blogs at zengestrom.com . He talks about Ditto to YourStory and answers a few questions.

Tell us more about Ditto

Wouldn’t it be great if you magically knew who was free to hang out, who was available for idle chitchat (or witty repartee) and who was en route to the Cineplex right near your house? And what if you also got recommendations of where to go to eat, what movie to see, where to go?

Say you’re looking to hang out. You post on Ditto, letting everyone know where you are and what you want to do. Your friends see it, and if they’re keen, they can ‘Ditto!’ and join in.

If you want you can post Ditto updates to Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare so friends on those services can see what you’re doing too.

Ditto is WD-40 for your social life. Check it out at: http://ditto.me!Thousands of people have joined in just the first few days, and The Wall Street Journal's All Things D blog, Read Write Web, GigaOM, and TechCrunch have all written in-depth reviews. Read them via our website: http://ditto.me

Here's a Scobleizer video on how it works: http://scobleizer.com/2011/03/03/first-look-check-into-the-future-ditto

How did it come about?

Fred Wilson recently wrote: "Every big powerful technology company has met a new technology that has undone their dominance. For Microsoft it was open source and the Internet. For Google, it appears that it may be social. For Facebook, it appears that it may be mobile." 

http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/01/building-better-social-graphs-continued.html

John Battelle wrote: "I expect more from Foursquare than just the momentary fun of checking in. To me, checking in is a search (see here for more on checking in as the newest field in the Database of Intentions), and so far, the "search engine results" are pretty thin."

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2010/04/foursquare_-_i_wish_it_was_better_for_me

- Ditto makes it easy to discover ad hoc recommendations about restaurants, movies, and other activities;

- and it is a simple way to share what you're up to without typing, designed from the ground up for mobile.

- This is like Foursquare checkins -- but much more useful because it is about sharing your intent to do something instead of what you've already done, and you get back recs from friends in real time as push notifications.

- It is not just about location. The same basic use case applies equally to a broad range of social objects, including netflix movies, books, music, etc. -- all now consumable on the device! We'll be adding new activities dynamically to the app over the next months.

- Discovery is going social, social is going mobile, and nailing it is a huge, Google-sized opportunity that could replace traditional search on the phone. Ditto's beauty is in that it naturally captures you at the moment when you make a decision, and combines algorithmic results with real time recs from your social graph.

- Tongue in cheek: Ditto is simpler than Facebook, more fun that Twitter, and more useful than Foursquare :)

How does it workEverything is wrapped in an easy to use iOS application - so it can live in your pocket.

Features you plan to add

Our primary focus is on expanding to a Web and Android version of Ditto. We're also looking into adding more things to share on Ditto, such as books, music, and other activities.

Pricing

Ditto is free and available in the App Store.

Visit Ditto here.