Share Your Current Location and Upcoming Plans on Vstrecher
The concept behind Russian mobile social network Vstrecher (“meeting” in Russian with a funky ‘er’ ending) is quite simple: share your location, current status and upcoming plans with friends, and discover new places along the way. The application uses a phone’s GPS (tower triangulation or manual location update) to determine user’s location and alerts friends using group text messaging service. When running on a background, Vstrecher updates your location automatically and sends updates as you go.
Currently the application works only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but they have plans to expand to the rest of Russia in the near future. The application itself is free, but you pay about $0.08 to update your status via SMS. Interestingly enough, there isn’t a version for IPhone or Android. Instead Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola handsets are supported. I assume that this has to do with the low penetration of smartphones in Russia (thoughts?).
The company was founded in 2008 by Sergey Denisyuk as a side project, but it quickly grew into a full time job. Today Vstreher generates revenue through the sales of its white-label platform. In parallel to Vstrecher, Sergey founded a mobile coupon company Topskidka which recently generated its first ad revenue. Although both projects are currently self-funded, Sergey plans to raise funding and will be presenting at The VC Trip To Russia later this month.