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TECHNOLOGY
Are drivers ready for this Bump?
By Benny Evangelista
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
At one time or another, all motorists have wanted to send a message to another driver, usually with a middle finger extended after avoiding a collision.
Or, in another scenario, what if “the love of your life winked at you at a stoplight,” said Mitch Thrower, chief executive and founder of Bump Network Inc.
Thrower’s startup is hoping drivers will want to join the new mobile social network, which is tied to car license plate numbers, so they can send those driver-to-driver messages.
But there’s another incentive. Bump Network hopes it can entice people to sign up by offering a way for advertisers to send specialized messages to customers when the technology reads their license plate number. So stores, for
example, could send electronic coupons to a customer’s smart phones as they park in the shopping mall lot, or fast-food restaurants could text drivers to try a new chicken sandwich while they wait in the drive-through lane.
“What Groupon did for coupons, Bump.com is going to do for real time, real world unique identifier messaging and marketing,” Thrower said at a tech conference this week in Santa Clara.
Social networking
The La Jolla (San Diego County) startup was one of several companies with a social media component that made their official launches at Demo Fall 2010, a semi annual conference designed to spotlight emerging technologies for potential investors.
The conference, which took place in the Santa Clara Convention Center, has in the past proven to be the launching pad for such game-changing companies as Palm Computing, Netscape, TiVo and E-Trade.
To be sure, there’s no guarantee Bump Network won’t end up being roadkill, but the company’s business model is driving in the same direction as a slew of emerging social “check-in” technologies such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Shopkick. And recently, social networking giant Facebook introduced a feature called Places that is expected to bring geolocation into the mainstream.
To join the Bump Network, drivers sign up and “claim” ownership of their license plate in the company’s database.
The license plate then becomes a real-world version of a Web hyperlink, Thrower said.
Bump members can then send voice, text or e-mail messages to other participating drivers if they want to compliment them on their choice of vehicle, tell them they have a flat tire or question where they learned how to drive. To address the potential problems of becoming a stalker magnet or of falling victim to other privacy issues, Bump members can choose to publicly share as much or as little information about themselves.
Why would someone join? The potential incentives are the other part of Bump’s business plan.
The company’s software, when tied into a video surveillance network or a mobile camera, can read and store five license plate numbers per second even at speeds of up to 150 mph.
So a business owner can scan the plates of cars parked in a shopping mall or stadium parking lot and push real-time messages of special deals or promotions, tailored to their needs depending on the information Bump members chose to share.
“As a business owner, anyone parking in your lot, you can now message them, connect with them in a very meaningful way,’’ said Thrower, who co-founded the Active Network, an online events registration firm that had $244 million in revenue last year.
Likely partnerships
Bump officials say they are about to announce some major partnership deals, but declined to give details.
Among the other companies that made presentations during Demo’s “social and media technologies” sessions:
homingCloud, a do-it-yourself real estate social network with the motto “happier, not broker.’’
The Chappaqua, N.Y., startup wants to “get rid of real estate brokers,” Chief Executive Officer Tina Fine told the Demo crowd.
Home sellers and apartment managers can post their available properties. Buyers can check out the inventory, find matches for what they are looking for and see suggestions from the homingCloud community.
Needly, an e-commerce site that is a blend of eBay, Craigslist and Priceline.
The Santa Monica company hopes to capture a market of people who have things to sell online, but find eBay or Craigslist too daunting, said Chief Executive Officer Fred Krueger.
Needly takes care of the transactions though its own payment system, and members can follow each other like on a social network. People can also set up their own private inventory to catalog their personal collections that are not for sale.
Weliket, a social shopping service from Select2gether Inc. of San Francisco.
Weliket (pronounced “we-like-it) lets users shop for products using any website and instantly seek “honest feedback from people you trust” through social networks, said founder and CEO Jeany Stein.
Touchring, which lets users make Web telephone calls, or send text or video, to social networking contacts or blogs.
“It allows you to actually call your social contacts without needing their numbers,” said John Kwag, who represented Touchring Co. Ltd. of Seoul. “We’re making your social graph a social phone book.”
Another company, C2Call of Sunnyvale, also was at Demo to promote a similar service called FriendCaller, which can make phone calls over the Internet through e-mails, social networks and mobile devices like the iPod Touch or iPad.
“What Groupon did for coupons, Bump.com is going to do for real time, real world unique identifier messaging and marketing.”
E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.
Are drivers ready for this Bump?
By Benny Evangelista
CHRONICLE STAFF WRITER
At one time or another, all motorists have wanted to send a message to another driver, usually with a middle finger extended after avoiding a collision.
Or, in another scenario, what if “the love of your life winked at you at a stoplight,” said Mitch Thrower, chief executive and founder of Bump Network Inc.
Thrower’s startup is hoping drivers will want to join the new mobile social network, which is tied to car license plate numbers, so they can send those driver-to-driver messages.
But there’s another incentive. Bump Network hopes it can entice people to sign up by offering a way for advertisers to send specialized messages to customers when the technology reads their license plate number. So stores, for
example, could send electronic coupons to a customer’s smart phones as they park in the shopping mall lot, or fast-food restaurants could text drivers to try a new chicken sandwich while they wait in the drive-through lane.
“What Groupon did for coupons, Bump.com is going to do for real time, real world unique identifier messaging and marketing,” Thrower said at a tech conference this week in Santa Clara.
Social networking
The La Jolla (San Diego County) startup was one of several companies with a social media component that made their official launches at Demo Fall 2010, a semi annual conference designed to spotlight emerging technologies for potential investors.
The conference, which took place in the Santa Clara Convention Center, has in the past proven to be the launching pad for such game-changing companies as Palm Computing, Netscape, TiVo and E-Trade.
To be sure, there’s no guarantee Bump Network won’t end up being roadkill, but the company’s business model is driving in the same direction as a slew of emerging social “check-in” technologies such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Shopkick. And recently, social networking giant Facebook introduced a feature called Places that is expected to bring geolocation into the mainstream.
To join the Bump Network, drivers sign up and “claim” ownership of their license plate in the company’s database.
The license plate then becomes a real-world version of a Web hyperlink, Thrower said.
Bump members can then send voice, text or e-mail messages to other participating drivers if they want to compliment them on their choice of vehicle, tell them they have a flat tire or question where they learned how to drive. To address the potential problems of becoming a stalker magnet or of falling victim to other privacy issues, Bump members can choose to publicly share as much or as little information about themselves.
Why would someone join? The potential incentives are the other part of Bump’s business plan.
The company’s software, when tied into a video surveillance network or a mobile camera, can read and store five license plate numbers per second even at speeds of up to 150 mph.
So a business owner can scan the plates of cars parked in a shopping mall or stadium parking lot and push real-time messages of special deals or promotions, tailored to their needs depending on the information Bump members chose to share.
“As a business owner, anyone parking in your lot, you can now message them, connect with them in a very meaningful way,’’ said Thrower, who co-founded the Active Network, an online events registration firm that had $244 million in revenue last year.
Likely partnerships
Bump officials say they are about to announce some major partnership deals, but declined to give details.
Among the other companies that made presentations during Demo’s “social and media technologies” sessions:
homingCloud, a do-it-yourself real estate social network with the motto “happier, not broker.’’
The Chappaqua, N.Y., startup wants to “get rid of real estate brokers,” Chief Executive Officer Tina Fine told the Demo crowd.
Home sellers and apartment managers can post their available properties. Buyers can check out the inventory, find matches for what they are looking for and see suggestions from the homingCloud community.
Needly, an e-commerce site that is a blend of eBay, Craigslist and Priceline.
The Santa Monica company hopes to capture a market of people who have things to sell online, but find eBay or Craigslist too daunting, said Chief Executive Officer Fred Krueger.
Needly takes care of the transactions though its own payment system, and members can follow each other like on a social network. People can also set up their own private inventory to catalog their personal collections that are not for sale.
Weliket, a social shopping service from Select2gether Inc. of San Francisco.
Weliket (pronounced “we-like-it) lets users shop for products using any website and instantly seek “honest feedback from people you trust” through social networks, said founder and CEO Jeany Stein.
Touchring, which lets users make Web telephone calls, or send text or video, to social networking contacts or blogs.
“It allows you to actually call your social contacts without needing their numbers,” said John Kwag, who represented Touchring Co. Ltd. of Seoul. “We’re making your social graph a social phone book.”
Another company, C2Call of Sunnyvale, also was at Demo to promote a similar service called FriendCaller, which can make phone calls over the Internet through e-mails, social networks and mobile devices like the iPod Touch or iPad.
“What Groupon did for coupons, Bump.com is going to do for real time, real world unique identifier messaging and marketing.”
E-mail Benny Evangelista at bevangelista@sfchronicle.com.
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