San Diego’s Bump.com Ready to Hit the Road With Auto-Based Social Networking

picture of the license plate.

Predictably, one of Bump.com’s key applications is romantically hitting on someone attractive in another car.

Suzanne Somers in American Graffiti

If the technology had been around for the 1973 film “American Graffiti,” for example, Richard Dreyfuss could have used his smart phone to scan an image of the white T-bird license plate being driven by the beautiful and mysterious blonde (Suzanne Somers). He then could have used the Bump network to send her a message directly instead of seeking help from radio DJ Wolfman Jack and spending the rest of movie desperately trying to find her.

“It’s this amazing communications platform that allows anyone to connect with anyone in their cars,” Thrower says. He sees endless possibilities for using the Bump network—not to be confused with Mountain View, CA-based Bump Technologies—pointing out that the technology enables users to communicate V-to-V (as in vehicle-to-vehicle, or consumer-to-consumer) as well as B-to-V (business-to-consumer) and G-to-V (government-to-consumer.)

Thrower, who founded an online marathon registration business called Racegate (which became the Active Network), told me that Bump.com was “a reverse-engineered business.” He said he set out to start a new company thinking, “Let’s find a

Pages: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.