Doodle was created in 2003 by Swiss computer scientist Michael Näf, a graduate of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). Näf was later joined by fellow ETH-graduate Paul E. Sevinç and in 2007 incorporated Doodle in Zurich. They now have 10 employees.

The company is partly funded by venture capitalist Creathor Venture, who is engaged in more than 20 companies, mainly from Germany and Switzerland. Additionally, Doodle has also received funds from the Cantonal Bank of Schwyz (Schwyzer Kantonalbank) through that bank’s innovation foundation. In terms of income, Doodle offers targeted adverts that are displayed to users of the free basic service. Users can, however, buy “Premium Doodle” for CHF 28 to get rid of the ads. Another interesting service introduced in 2009 is “Branded Doodle”, which targets business users in particular and allows for a branded, corporate Doodle instance and offers additional efficiency and security features (CHF 480 for the whole package).

Doodle has created quite a buzz in the three years since its incorporation. The service has not only been featured in several big Swiss and European print and online media, but has also been recognized across the big pond. Doodle was mentioned in well-known blogs like Techcrunch, WebWorkerDaily or CNet and has even made it onto washingtonpost.com.

Among several national and international prizes, Doodle has also won Mashable’s 2008 Open Web Award in both the Places & Events and the Blogger’s Choice categories. In 2009 the University of St.Gallen, a renowned Swiss business school, listed Doodle as the third most innovative Swiss ITC Company, trailing industry heavyweights Logitech and Swisscom.

In May 2010 Doodle reported 6 million unique monthly visitors to their website, double the numbers of 2009. In June 2010 a new calendar view option was introduced to Doodle. The company described this as a major improvement and core of the next generation of their product. The main idea was to integrate Doodle scheduling into a user’s existing calendars (e.g. Google Calendar, Lotus Notes or Outlook Calendar). This is a smart move. It eliminates the need for checking both your Doodle and your calendar separately and also converts the traditional, old fashioned table form of Doodle into a more practical calendar view that users are familiar with. Still, it remains to be seen if Doodle can turn its success in Switzerland, a relatively small market, into a global success story.

Regardless of such future developments, Doodle is a fine example of how Web 2.0 and social communications is meant to work. First of all, a service needs to be instantly understandable and usable. Even if there is quite a lot of code, servers and what not in the background, users do not want to be bothered by lengthy introductions or hand books. Secondly, Doodle facilitates daily communications by a smart, non-intrusive way. People want and need to communicate, even if a day today does not have more hours than a day 100 years ago. The solution is to communicate more effectively. And that is what Doodle is all about.

So, let me ask you again: Do you still use email CC back and forth – or do you doodle?

It all started on April 15, when the ash cloud from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland caused several European countries to close their air space. Consequently, Swiss International Airlines had to cancel all flights to and from the UK and Norway. Up until then, Swiss’s Facebook fan page had mostly served only as a marketing instrument. Fans, or customers if you will, were told about special offers, new destinations, corporate results or new website functions, for example. But when the volcanic ash crisis hit air traffic in Europe and the company’s hotlines had trouble coping with the amount of callers, the company’s Facebook team started to post updates and information there. And passengers took advantage of that. As increasing numbers of flights were cancelled, Facebook turned into a hub for customers unable to get information through Swiss’ temporarily overloaded website and/or telephone line.

Instead of having to tell each caller the same things (check if your flight is leaving at all and only come to the airport if you have a confirmation), the Facebook fan site served as a self-service support community. On such a community, customers profit from an accumulated knowledge base and can get help from other customers who might have had a similar problem or have other insider information. Only if this self-service support fails will the customer have to actually call a corporate hot-line. This frees up a lot of support resources and support operatives can use their time for the “serious cases” instead of having to answer the same basic questions again and again.

Dell, for example, has institutionalized this concept in their Social Community. They offer support forums, blogs with additional industry insights and IdeaStorm, an innovation community that lets customers post ideas on how to improve Dell’s products and services.

But, having a huge amount of information and knowledge available through the community doesn’t only free up support resources on the corporate level. It also improves a customer’s support experience, because even a skilled support operative can’t have an answer to every possible problem. If a problem is very specific and maybe not yet addressed in support handbooks or procedures, then other community members might be able to help instead. Of course, this only works if there are enough skilled community members. So key to a successful Social Support Community is to attract valuable members, give them incentives to participate, reward member efforts and maintain a helpful and open community culture. In creating a self-service Support Community and motivating customers to help each other, customers will get better help faster, feel valued and thus are positively inclined towards the company. So, not only can support costs be lowered, but such viral effects benefit the corporate image and ultimately sales, too. The power of Social Communities!

Ever wondered what people were doing while sitting in front of their computer? You can now! All you need is a webcam and a little site called www.chatroulette.com. 17-year-old Andrey Ternovskiy from Russia set up this simple but intriguing way of meeting total strangers. Launched in November 2009, his idea has been featured in numerous news magazines around the world, including the New York Times, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and our very own 20min.ch here in Switzerland.

How does it work? You don’t need to register, just go the site, hit the “new game” button and chat away. If you don’t like who you see, click “next” and you get a new partner. As Robert J. Moore stated on techcrunch.com, 89% of participants are male, 11% female. There is an age restriction of 16 in place for the site, but no formal verification is conducted. This is certainly an issue, as chatroulette isn’t for minors. In fact, there are quite a few perverts taking advantage of the completely anonymous character of the service, as a sample of screenshots on tumblr.com shows.

Aside from such unfortunate encounters, which are a sad reality in cyberspace, there are a lot of  “relatively” normal people playing chatroulette as well. Compete.com shows a veritable hockey-stick-effect of pageviews for www.chatroulette.com, currently reaching nearly 1 million unique visitors, while Alexa.com ranks the site among the top1000, traffic-wise.

A quick ad hoc experiment by myself taught me one thing: The whole idea sounds quite fascinating, in theory. But after connecting to my first handful of random strangers, the whole thing started to bore me. And when my next “partner” revealed more than I ever wanted to know, I knew – this was my first and last chat roulette.