Map-Based Community Network Brings Real-World Neighborhoods Online

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today at the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Fatdoor™ (www.Fatdoor.com), a new community networking Web site dedicated to helping people get to know their neighbors, launched its service in the San Francisco Bay Area. Fatdoor brings together familiar social networking elements such as personal profiles, intra-personal connections, group networking and information sharing, but is centered on local neighborhoods. Using the Microsoft Virtual Earth online mapping platform as a base to visualize and explore a neighborhood, Fatdoor creates a social network for people who want to connect, communicate and share with others in their local communities. The alpha site is initially available as an invitation-only trial, and will be rolled-out in additional cities nationwide throughout the summer.

“Life is local, with people’s communities extending in concentric circles from their homes to their neighborhoods, towns and beyond”

“Life is local, with people’s communities extending in concentric circles from their homes to their neighborhoods, towns and beyond,” said Bill Harris, chairman of the board, Fatdoor. “Fatdoor mimics this on the Web. With rich maps and pre-populated data for more than 100 million households in the U.S., Fatdoor brings real neighborhoods online giving people the tools to find and communicate with their neighbors.”

By bringing together the best of existing social networking services, wikis, user-generated content and online mapping, Fatdoor enables people to connect, communicate and share with their neighbors.

• Connect: People can get to know their neighbors by exploring local profiles and interests, and discover new friends in the neighborhood.
• Communicate: Using the Fatdoor mail service, people can reach out to neighbors in a non-invasive, non-threatening way.
• Share: Once connections are made, neighbors can build their community around sharing common interests, pastimes and goals.

The company is based in Palo Alto, California, and is led by technology industry veterans such as Co-founder and CEO Raj Abhyanker, who is the inventor of the Fatdoor concept and an active local community leader in the Bay Area. He is also a patent attorney, an electrical engineer and was the CEO of numerous Internet startups in the mid 1990s. Co-founder and CTO Chandu Thota previously worked at Microsoft where he was a central figure in building the Microsoft Virtual Earth online mapping platform and Live Search Maps; he has also authored several books including the leading text on Virtual Earth and online mapping technology from O'Reilly Publishers. Board Chairman Bill Harris was formerly CEO of Intuit and PayPal.

Along with Microsoft Virtual Earth, Fatdoor also has technology relationships with Amazon.com, Google Inc., and Yahoo! Inc.

About Fatdoor

Fatdoor is a Community Network that enables people to get to know their neighbors. Claim your profile today at http://www.Fatdoor.com.

Fatdoor, “get to know your neighbors” and shoutout are trademarks of Fatdoor, Inc. All other trademarks referenced in this release are the property of their respective owners and are hereby acknowledged.