Founder, Ditto

Jyri Engeström is founder of Ditto, a location app that goes beyond the check-in; “It is about sharing your intent to do something instead of what you’ve already done,”

He also cofounded Jaiku, which grew into the leading European microblogging service and was acquired by Google in 2007. At Google Jyri was responsible for mobile applications including Mobile Calendar and the Gmail Mobile client, and spearheaded Google’s efforts in social media, starting up Google Buzz, Google Profiles, and Google Latitude. He left Google to become an angel investor and start his own new company Pingpin. Prior to Jaiku Jyri worked as Senior Product Manager, Internet Handhelds at Nokia. A sociologist by training, he is noted for coining the term ‘social object’ to refer to photos, bookmarks, and other shareable Web content. He blogs at zengestrom.com