About Shizzow

Shizzow is a location-based social service that we built with the goal of helping you build quality relationships through face-to-face interaction. In other words, we want you to get off your butt and away from the computer to meet your friends out in the real world where you can have experiences that don't involve typing.

Shizzow provides the technology for friends to share locations, so you can spend more time hanging out with your peeps and less time trying to coordinate bringing them together. We don't think that people need yet another social network, so Shizzow is focused on finding your friends, and we make it easy to get notifications of your friends' locations via the website, IM, SMS, RSS feeds, etc. Don't like how we do it? You may write a custom Shizzow-based application using our API.

How do I use Shizzow?

Using Shizzow is fairly simple. Let's say you are sitting in Stumptown Coffee Roasters having a cup of delicious coffee. After you get logged into the site, search for Stumptown, enter a message to let people know what you are doing, and post it to Shizzow. Assuming you have friends and people like you, one of those friends just might show up to join you. When you are ready to leave you might want to check out the link for nearby people to find other friends and decide where to go next. It's a great way to find friends after work for a drink.

For bonus points, you can also add tags to the location, update locations with corrected information and more. Our FAQ has much more information about other ways to use Shizzow.

Why did we create Shizzow?

Shizzow was developed as a solution to a real need to find better ways to connect with friends in the real world. In early 2006, members of Portland's PDXPHP users group began using a shared Google calendar to notify each other when and where they would gather for weekend code sprints. In September 2007, Mark and Ryan commenced coding to turn their Google calendar into a social network that would notify friends of each other's current locations. Right before the beta launch in July 2008, Dawn joined the team to help manage the increasingly important community.

Did you know that we are bootstrapped?

Those of you who are new to Shizzow may not realize that every member of the Shizzow team has another job to pay the bills, and Shizzow has received every ounce of love that we have left after closing out our daily 9-5 shifts or finishing our daily client work.

The Shizzow Team

	Dawn Foster Dawn is responsible for managing the Shizzow community and evangelizing the benefits of using Shizzow. She spends her time organizing local Portland events and hanging out at a variety of different meetups.
	Ryan Snyder Ryan handles most of the business concerns and keeps the rest of us on track while also digging into the code whenever time permits. He spends his free time hiking and finding new places to enjoy great food and wine.
	Mark Wallaert Mark is focused on making sure that Shizzow has an architecture that can scale to match the growth curve that we expect from Shizzow. Frequently, he can be found practicing martial arts and other philosophic pursuits.

Shizzow Advisors

	Ray King Ray shares his expertise in taking companies through all phases of the growth process from start to finish. He is involved in most Portland wiki efforts, has great taste in books, and is a snappy dresser.
	Scott Kveton Scott provides valuable advice to the Shizzow team on a variety of business and technology topics. He is also an avid pizza connoisseur, caffeine consumer, and bacon enthusiast.

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