On dopplr: Office Sharing with “celebrity programmer” Matt Biddulph

Matt was just named by the Evening Standard as one of the 1000 most influential people in London, alongside “celebrity web designer” Matt Jones.

These are the guys that are building a service called Dopplr. Its going to change how frequent travelers… well, travel. Now if only they could get me upgraded to business class somehow. Or make me a cup of coffee or something. The downside of Matt and Matt’s fame is that its going to be harder for us to sustain this as a space for bedouin workers.

Basically – what Dennis said:

Business travel can be a gruesome experience. The potential to share with friends brings a new dimension to the experience that makes life easier.

Sharing travel information among colleagues can make meet up planning much easier while cutting down on email exchanges.

Dopplr has compiled a list of the Dopplr 100. This is a list of global companies that Dopplr believes could benefit from aggregating the people who travel on behalf of those organizations. IBM’er Luis Suarez is using it, noting that: “Through the IBM (account) I connected with a bunch of folks who I didn’t know were using Dopplr when they connected with me.” Luis has two Dopplr identities, one for sharing among colleagues and one for friends. This is entirely consistent with the way people organize their lives.

Shared information about location specific topics could reduce travel cost. For example, knowing a better but cheaper hotel is a good worth

The potential to mashup with services like Kayak could allow self service travel planning. This is something I recently experienced while organizing a trip. I was able to let the travel agent know the best flight combinations at the best prices while pointing them to my Dopplr to work out appropriate travel.

Data aggregation about the most common kinds of travel could be used to leverage corporate travel contracts among multiple participants. Dopplr knows a lot about travel patterns – way more than any single travel agent or corporate travel planner. This knowledge is incredibly valuable because it can be used to disintermediate and drive down cost while improving individual value.

Picture “stolen” from The Guardian, which profiled dopplr here.

disclosure: this blog is partly intended to make Matt a “celebrity programmer”