The holidays are coming up and we are in a giving mood here at DoubleDutch. Recently we announced our partnership with Ning to bring networks ‘geosocial’, and since then we have been ecstatic at the response from network creators about the potential of this platform. Specifically, what this means for you is that you can now let your community members "check-in" to places in the real world on their mobile phones, and win badges and points for their efforts.
Sign up in 2010, it’s free for 3 months
Yep: sign up by Dec 31st, and you get a mobile check-in app private for your Ning Pro community for free for three months. We are doing this for two reasons: 1) we believe Ning is a great fit for our platform for a long time to come, and 2) we want feedback from as many networks as possible to grow and develop the platform to best fit Ning communities.
What you get out of it
As network administrators, you can provide your community with a great mobile component. Our app uses geolocation technology to give your members the ability to share their location with other members, while adding notes along with their check ins to add a fun and engaging way to connect your community. And because of our partnership with Ning, the apps share members’ activity seamlessly with their friends on Ning (as well as Facebook and Twitter). Each piece of activity within the app earn the user points and badges (that come with the app), so members can compete to be on the top of the leaderboard.
Once the three month introductory period is over, our plan is to offer three very reasonable pricing tiers: Our Mini tier, for communities of up to 150 people, will be free. This package will include full check-in functionality, access to DoubleDutch's 5M or so points of interest (aka places like bars and restaurants) around the world, and our standard badge package.
For larger communities, our Plus tier is a good option. This package will include all of the features included in the Mini tier, plus a self serve dashboard that lets you manage your community's place data. With this tool, you will be add new venues in bulk, and edit existing venues. You also get unlimited usage with this package. Pricing will be about $10 per month.
Our Pro tier offers just about everything you need to run a world-class geosocial network. In addition to data management tools, you also get a local deals / coupons dashboard that will allow you to monetize the network, as well as access to analytics that lets you track and understand your community's real world behaviors. With our Pro package, and you can also upload up to ten custom badges. Usage is unlimited, and pricing will be about $25 per month.
Take a look at the screen shot below of our analytics panel to get an idea of how it could benefit you and your community. 
If your community can benefit from geosocial, you can learn more about our platform and this offer, or jump straight to Connect & Create.
Comments
I keep getting an error code 404 every time I try to sign up for this service.
The Dashboard isn't available yet. As far as I can tell, you have to friend again in the DoubleDutch app. And it is confusing until you start adding content and get members using it, but then you begin to see the potential.
I just installed the app for my network. www.myarchn.com. Still testing and a little confused with how it works, here are some questions?
How do you get to the Dashboard shown above?
Do I have to friend again my already Ning friends on Double Dutch?
Downloaded the app. from the Apple store - which seems different that by going to the http://app.doubledutch.me/Contemporaryapp - but the sign in doesn't work for the first. What is the difference between both.
Thanks,
It would be great if we could edit/add this to our navigation on the mobile version of our Ning community. We could direct people to the mobile site and they would be able to checkin instead of needing to have the link on hand or bookmarked.
@Mathew The sooner you can allow us the option to access to the DD 5m points of interest, the better. It's much easier to get members to use the app if they can see content that's potentially relevant to them from their first contact with it. I'll be walking round and adding some key points to my app this Friday, but that's only on one small Spanish island (!) where I don't have a huge user base.....on the other hand, I have hundreds of members in many big cities across the globe.
@tim: We're working on better friend support but yes, if your Ning friends are using the app the experience is better. You'll also be able to put in deals or coupons, or other content that is delivered at time of check-in via our admin dashboard.
@ksjb: We are currently privately testing the DoubleDutch API with a few different customers. I'd anticipate a public launch of it in early 2011. You can currently access a lot of information from each app via an RSS feed. Our web site is http://doubledutch.me so please send over any other questions that you have.
Just an afterthought on Friends (I would have edited my comment, but couldn't). It could be that they will show up as they sign in to the app - I've been testing mine on my own without alerting my members! No doubt Mathew will clarify this!
This has huge potential for networks like mine, and I've got it working (though there are some small glitches which still need sorting). I expect I'll be pushing it out to members to try later today.
The app's integration with a Ning network seems to be fairly limited, other than pulling your ID and posting to the Activity feed. One thing it doesn't do - as far as I can tell - is automatically add your friends from the network. So "friending" in the mobile app is completely different, and I think some of my members will find that confusing: I suspect that I'll have to come up with a form of words to encourage people to find their friends locally on the mobile application.
Will the monetization scheme be deals/coupons sourced by DoubleDutch, or something we'll have to negotiate ourselves? If it's the latter, it's difficult for worldwide networks like mine, and it would be helpful to be able to run a mobile ad scheme of some kind.
Overall, though, this is an impressive addition for many networks, assuming we can make the financial side work. And your support team have been great.