GyPSii is a provider of

geosocial networking Geosocial networking is a type of social networking in which geographic services and capabilities such as geocoding and geotagging are used to enable additional social dynamics.

applications and services for the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

iPod The iPod is a series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices that were designed and marketed by Apple Inc. from 2001 to 2022. The iPod Classic#1st generation, first version was released on November 10, 2001, about mon ...

iPad The iPad is a brand of tablet computers developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run the company's mobile operating systems iOS and later iPadOS. The IPad (1st generation), first-generation iPad was introduced on January 27, 2010. ...

BlackBerry OS BlackBerry OS is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system developed by Canadian company Research In Motion (now BlackBerry Limited) for its BlackBerry line of smartphone handheld devices. The operating system provides multitasking ...

, Android and Java-based phones, Symbian S60 and S40, Windows Mobile and MID notebooks. The company is headquartered in

Amsterdam Amsterdam ( , ; ; ) is the capital of the Netherlands, capital and Municipalities of the Netherlands, largest city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It has a population of 933,680 in June 2024 within the city proper, 1,457,018 in the City Re ...

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

, with offices in

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

History

According to co-founder Daniel Harple, while cycling around Amsterdam in 2007 searching for nearby restaurants with his mobile phone browser, he realized the need for a software application that would allow friends to easily track and share locations and activities with each other. The previous year Harple had met GyPSii's other founder, Sam Critchley, who had been working on a location-based mobile URL geolocation application, a2b, originally based on a database of restaurant and other landmark locations, since 2004, and which had launched and received some international press coverage in 2006. After meeting, Harple and Critchley came up with the idea for GyPSii whilst meeting in a café in Amsterdam and began to collaborate on the new service. Their application became the Amsterdam-based company, GeoSolutions BV, doing business as Gypsii. Shortly afterward, the resulting startup was acquired and merged to Finnish company Benefon, later known as GeoSentric OYJ, parent company of GeoSentric Group. At this time GyPSii received early press coverage noting the role positioning technologies would begin to play in mobile social networks. GyPSii was launched in time for the

2008 Olympics The 2008 Summer Olympics (), officially the Games of the XXIX Olympiad () and officially branded as Beijing 2008 (), were an international multisport event held from 8 to 24 August 2008, in Beijing, China. A total of 10,942 athletes fr ...

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

, where the app's real time blogging enabled event results, videos and pictures to be "broadcast" instantly via GyPSii. Shortly after its launch, Harple predicted GyPSii "could have more users in one year than Facebook had in three." GyPSii added about 1 million new users in China in the last quarter of 2009. By May 2010 the company reported it had reached over two million users, and in June 2010, added 130 million subscribers in Latin America as part of a deal with mobile operator

Telefónica , S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company with registered office and headquarters located in two different places, both in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the ...

. In 2009, GyPSii was a

Webby Award The Webby Awards (colloquially referred to as the Webbys) are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over three thousand industry experts a ...

winner in the Social Networking category. In 2010

Sina Weibo Weibo (), or Sina Weibo (), is a Chinese microblogging ( weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily ...

entered into a joint venture with GeoSentric's GyPSii. Sina eventually took over operations of GyPSii services such as the Chinese language location-based mobile social networking application called WeilLngDi, as well as the location-based photo-sharing service similar to

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

called TuDing. In September 2010, Harple resigned as Executive Chairman and Group CEO, but continues as a major shareholder and lead inventor/patent-holder to GeoSentric and its technologies.

Products

GyPSii

GyPSii's "social, local, mobile" application utilizes

GPS The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a satellite-based hyperbolic navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31. It is one of the global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) that provide geol ...

to allow mobile device users to search for and identify their contacts locally or internationally and add a real time, location-based element to social networking. Compatible with other social networking sites, GyPSii allows location-specific functionality to be transferred to a user's Facebook page, showing their own location in relation to friends locations. GyPSii technology also lets users view blogs, news, events and social media content, filtered by location. Mobile phone users can create user-generated content in real time using GyPSii, The GyPSii

Application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

and resulting

User Experience User experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, a ...

has been likened by company officials to "a window into the management of your social fabric and your interaction with people, not just on GyPSii but on other social networks." GyPSii's underlying database of user information can additionally be used to target advertising. In October 2008, GyPSii's PlaceMe application, which lets users geotag photo, video, and audio recordings to be shared with friends, was given a

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

Star Developer Award, as voted by

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

subsidiary

Navteq Navteq Corporation (styled as 'NAVTEQ') was an American Chicago-based provider of geographic information system (GIS) data and a major provider of base electronic navigable maps. The company was acquired by Nokia in 2007–2008, and fully merged ...

. GyPSii's

app was launched in 2009, allowing user-created places and experiences to become Internet-searchable destinations that are available for friends and communities to share and comment on, not only in GyPSii, but also across other social media such as

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

China Unicom China United Network Communications Group (China Unicom) is a Chinese state-owned telecommunications operator. Originally founded (on January 6 2009) as a wireless paging and GSM mobile operator, it currently provides a range of services inclu ...

has also partnered with GyPSii, using its technology to bundle GyPSii on all iPhones in China and launch a China-based social networking application for the iPhone called Unispace.

OEx (Open Experience)

Launched in February 2009, the GyPSii OpenExperience API (OEx) is a

platform as a service Platform as a service (PaaS) or application platform as a service (aPaaS) or platform-based service is a cloud computing service model where users provision, instantiate, run and manage a modular bundle of a computing platform and applications, w ...

for incorporating location-based social networking functionality, location context, advertising, and user generated content into embedded mobile clients and 3rd party applications. The OEx API is the same platform on which GyPSii's own clients are built.

Tweetsii

In March 2010, GyPSii launched Tweetsii, a real time app for the iPhone, Android and

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

platforms featuring user created tweets, images, reviews, comments, checkins, and tips with the ability to build an index of places, with updates from Twitter users and other

location-based service Location-based service (LBS) is a general term denoting software service (economics), services which use geographic data and information to provide services or information to users. LBS can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, indoor ...

s including

Gowalla Gowalla is a location-based social networking service. It originally launched in 2007 and closed in 2012, but was relaunched on March 10, 2023. Users are able to check in at "Spots" in their local vicinity, either through a dedicated mobile appli ...

and

Foursquare Four square is a ball game. Four square may also refer to: Internet and entertainment * Foursquare City Guide, a local search and discovery app * 4 Square (game show), ''4 Square'' (game show), a British game show * 4 Square (TV series), ''4 Squ ...

WeiLingDi

In March 2011, GyPSii partnered with Chinese web portal Sina.com to launch WeiLingDi, a Chinese language location-based mobile social networking application that allows users to share their location and status, broadcast events and updates, find friends, and earn rewards points and badges. In 2011, analysts speculated that WeiLingDi could generate substantial income from advertising and data analysis services based on Sina's 100 million users.

TudingMe

Powered by GyPSii technology, TudingMe is a location-based social photography application that lets users personalize and share photos to Facebook, Twitter, Sina, Sohu, 163, Renren, Kaixin and QQ accounts. Features include 21 custom image filters, tagging and organizing of photos, and location auto-adding so users can find and interact with friends nearby. A China-specific

-like photo-sharing version of the app is called "TuDing", which means ‘thumbtack’ in Chinese. With the release of a Windows phone 7 version, TuDing covers all major smartphone platforms including iOS, Android, Symbian and BlackBerry. The company reported more than 4 million users and uploads of over 6 million photos in December 2011.

References

{{Reflist, 2

External links

Gypsii.com
Mobile social software Geosocial networking IOS software BlackBerry software