About Shizzow

Shizzow is a location-based social web service that we built with the goal of helping you build quality relationships through face-to-face interaction. Shizzow provides the technology for you to notify your friends of your location, with as little effort as possible, so you can spend more time hanging out with your peeps and less time trying to coordinate bringing them together through phone, email, SMS and IM.

How do I use Shizzow?

It's fairly simple, really. Let's say you are sitting in Stumptown Coffee Roasters having a cup of delicious coffee. After you get logged into the site, enter Stumptown in the place name search box (make sure your city, state / country location is correct), and find the Stumptown with the right address from the list of results. Click "Shout + Message", enter a message to let people know what you are doing at Stumptown, and click "shout" to post it to Shizzow. Voilà!

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, Sam 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.

Why are we bootstrapping?

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

Given the economic uncertainties that are affecting many companies and startups, we’ve decided to continue Shizzow as a self-funded project, and to work towards profitability without external assistance. While our technological enhancements may not be rolled out as rapidly we would like, we feel that self-sufficient sustainable growth, ala 37Signals, is the right way to grow Shizzow.

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

	Sam Keen Sam brings his extensive knowledge of APIs and SMS to the table for Shizzow. If he's not covered in sawdust from a house project, you'll probably find him working in one of the many coffee shops in Portland.
	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.