Dodgeball 2.0 a.k.a. FourSquare may soon announce a seed round of $1.35 million according to a new SEC document reported by PaidContent and a direct company confirmation given to TechCrunch.

According to the stories, UnionSquare Ventures and O’ Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, as well as unnamed angels, have invested $1.35 million as a seed round.

FourSquare is a popular iPhone app that fuses geo-location, micro updates in the FourSquare network as well as other social networks such as Twitter, and social gaming into one mobile app for the iPhone and Google Android phones. Versions are imminent for Blackberry and Windows Mobile (courtesy of Anand Iyer).

When Twitter hit SXSW in 2007, it was primarily used as a source for sharing and finding friends as they scoured the streets and events strewn about Austin, Texas. In 2009, it was all about FourSquare.

The company was founded by Dennis Crowley, the creator of Dodgeball, which was eventually sold to Google where it was slowly forgotten and subsequently terminated. The team working on Dodgeball at Google have left to join FourSquare.

Similar to Twitter and other mobile location apps such as BrightKite, FourSquare provides you with an integrated activity stream of friends based on where they are and what they’re doing. In addition, FourSquare introduces points, the ability to earn badges, to do lists and tips, among other interactive, social, and competitive aspects. Each time that someone checks into a location, for example, it not only updates the stream, they also earn points. Users accumulate points the more they check into particular locations, contributing to an ever-changing leaderboard determined by locale. The more a player checks into an establishment, they can earn “mayorship” until someone else assumes the role by visiting the location more often than the other. Local businesses are picking up on this activity and offering free food and drinks to the mayor of the proprietorship.

I firmly believe that Yelp should take a serious look at FourSquare as it can bridge mobile reviews with local commerce and promotions tied together by a portable, mobile social graph. Robert Scoble agrees.

Loopt, an officially Apple-endorsed location-based network for the iphone and other mobile platforms, announced that it has solidified a partnership with AT&T that allows iPhone users to run the application in the background to automatically update their location and be alerted to when their friends are nearby.

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Now available! (click below to purchase the new book or poster):

by Michelle Lentz

No matter the economy, conferences go on. The focus just changes a bit, and of course, they’re all vying for your shrinking but ever-important conference dollars.

March 31 – April 3 is the spring Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, with the appropriate theme of The Power of Less. As we all know, social media tools do allow you to do more with web-based, free and low-cost tools filled with user-generated content.  This conference also focuses on looking towards the future, as the technology around us rapidly changes.

Web 2.0 Expo features the most innovative and successful Internet industry figures and companies providing attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web 2.0 world to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities. Web 2.0 Expo is co-produced by O’Reilly Media and TechWeb.

The spring conference has 5 tracks:

• Strategy & Business Models
• Marketing and Community
• Design & User Experience
• Fundamentals
• Development

There are also 4 “mini focus tracks”:

• Web operations
• Mobile
• Security
• Web 2.0 at work

Registration is open. Since you’re smart enough to be reading bub.blicio.us, you get a discount code. Use websf09tro30 to receive a 30% discount on the conference.

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Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Blogs: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net

by Michelle Lentz

ETech, the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, is O’Reilly Media’s flagship “O’Reilly Radar” event. It focuses on what’s happening now and what’s coming down the pike. The conference is being held at the lovely Fairmont San Jose in San Jose, CA, on March 9-12.

The conference is more than just never-ending session after session. They include collaborative events and technologies to immerse you in the experience and increase your learning.

This year’s theme is Living Reinvented and looks at hour technology intersects with our need to live more sustainably. New session tracks include CityTech, Health, Materials, Mobile & The Web, Geek Life, and Developing Markets. Keynote speakers include Mary Lou Jepsen, Alex Steffen, Joi Ito, Rebecca MacKinnon and more.

Early bird registration for the conference ends January 26. You can get a bub.blicio.us discount of 15% by using the code. View the complete schedule grid and sign up soon.

Photo credit: Michelle Lentz – Tim O’Reilly @ DevLearn 2008

by Brian Solis

John Batelle and Tim O’Reilly

The Web 2.0 Summit opened up with a few powerful statements from Tim O’Reilly in defense of the idea of “web 2.0,” not the moniker that is argued to have lost its soul and meaning.

“Do you think web 2.0 is over,” he asked emphatically.

“Are we done evolving the Web as a platform,” O’Reilly continued.

O’Reilly is referring to the confusion of technology and business opportunities that have yet to be discovered and introduced with “me too” startups not closing critical rounds of financing.

With many leading bloggers and influencers citing the end of Web 2.0, O’Reilly truly believes that the opportunity for innovation is only pervasive.

I agree.

This isn’t a market for startups to capitalize on leap-frogging existing solutions and trying to change the world and carry the industry one iteration at a time. This is our chance to create new pioneering solutions and business models to not just generate revenue, but carry forward the true spirit of “Web 2.0″

Pictures from the Web 2.0 Summit Day One are available in my album on Flickr.

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