GyPSii
GyPSii is a provider of geosocial networking applications and services for the iPhone, iPod, iPad, BlackBerry OS, Android and Java-based phones, Symbian S60 and S40, Windows Mobile and MID notebooks. The company is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with offices in Asia and the United States.
History
According to co-founder Daniel Harple, while cycling around Amsterdam in 2007 searching for nearby restaurants with his mobile phone browser, he realized the need for a software application that would allow friends to easily track and share locations and activities with each other. The previous year Harple had met GyPSii's other founder, Sam Critchley, who had been working on a location-based mobile URL geolocation application, a2b, originally based on a database of restaurant and other landmark locations, since 2004, and which had launched and received some international press coverage in 2006. After meeting, Harple and Critchley came up with the idea for GyPSii whilst meeting in a café in Amsterdam and began to collaborate on the new service. Their application became the Amsterdam-based company, GeoSolutions BV, doing business as Gypsii. Shortly afterward, the resulting startup was acquired and merged to Finnish company Benefon, later known as GeoSentric OYJ, parent company of GeoSentric Group. At this time GyPSii received early press coverage noting the role positioning technologies would begin to play in mobile social networks.GyPSii was launched in time for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, where the app's real time blogging enabled event results, videos and pictures to be "broadcast" instantly via GyPSii. Shortly after its launch, Harple predicted GyPSii "could have more users in one year than Facebook had in three." GyPSii added about 1 million new users in China in the last quarter of 2009. By May 2010 the company reported it had reached over two million users, and in June 2010, added 130 million subscribers in Latin America as part of a deal with mobile operator Telefónica.
In 2009, GyPSii was a Webby Award winner in the Social Networking category.
In 2010 Sina Weibo entered into a joint venture with GeoSentric's GyPSii. Sina eventually took over operations of GyPSii services such as the Chinese language location-based mobile social networking application called WeilLngDi, as well as the location-based photo-sharing service similar to Instagram called TuDing.
In September 2010, Harple resigned as Executive Chairman and Group CEO, but continues as a major shareholder and lead inventor/patent-holder to GeoSentric and its technologies.
Products
GyPSii
GyPSii's "social, local, mobile" application utilizes GPS to allow mobile device users to search for and identify their contacts locally or internationally and add a real time, location-based element to social networking. Compatible with other social networking sites, GyPSii allows location-specific functionality to be transferred to a user's Facebook page, showing their own location in relation to friends locations. GyPSii technology also lets users view blogs, news, events and social media content, filtered by location.Mobile phone users can create user-generated content in real time using GyPSii, The GyPSii Application programming interface and resulting User Experience has been likened by company officials to "a window into the management of your social fabric and your interaction with people, not just on GyPSii but on other social networks." GyPSii's underlying database of user information can additionally be used to target advertising.
In October 2008, GyPSii's PlaceMe application, which lets users geotag photo, video, and audio recordings to be shared with friends, was given a Symbian Star Developer Award, as voted by Nokia subsidiary Navteq.
GyPSii's iPhone app was launched in 2009, allowing user-created places and experiences to become Internet-searchable destinations that are available for friends and communities to share and comment on, not only in GyPSii, but also across other social media such as Facebook and Twitter. China Unicom has also partnered with GyPSii, using its technology to bundle GyPSii on all iPhones in China and launch a China-based social networking application for the iPhone called Unispace.