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Point and Click

Radar lets amateur
shutterbugs share a
slice of life.

Talking Pictures
A San Francisco start-up uses cellphone cameras to inspire
a new kind of conversation. BY J E S S E H I CK S
PHONE PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN MUGGENBORG/MUGGPHOTO

G R AY S O N C A R T E R , a fifth-year economics events from my life, the stuff I wouldn’t neces-

major at UCLA, started using radar.net a year
ago, mostly among his fraternity brothers. “It got
to be kind of a competition,” he says. “We’d take
a picture of the crowd at a great party, then send
it to each other. Because it’s instantaneous, it
invites you to show off a little bit.” Later, Carter
set his mother up with an account; though she
rarely posted pictures of her own. “When I came
home for Christmas,” he says, “I was telling sto-
ries about the year, and she had seen everyday
sarily call home to talk about.” When Carter
started talking about a recent Bayside concert,
she’d already seen the pictures. “It was nice to
have my parents see what I was up to, without
trying to synchronize our schedules to talk
about everything.”
Fostering that kind of extended intimacy—
what founder and CEO John Poisson calls
“Radar moments”— is the company’s driving
ambition. Poisson, 35, with close-cropped hair

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 GROUND FLOOR
and a pair of slate-grey titanium eyeglass-
es, has an ambitious goal. He wants to
revolutionize the way people communi-
cate. “Something special happens when
you can immediately share a picture with
people close to you,” he says. “You start
being able to show people where you
are, to convey information and even your
state of mind. You can keep in touch just
by instantly sharing these pictures.”
Clearly, Poisson is not the only one
who feels this way. Radar opened to the
public in mid-2006 and has since grown
to include more than a million users.
It serves up about 50 million pictures a
month, with the majority of those views
coming from mobile devices. The ser-
vice generates 60 percent of those hits
outside the United States in countries
with limited access to computers.
That impressive growth stems from
Radar’s focus on a new kind of conversa-
tion, one based around pictures rather
than words. Thanks to the ubiquity of
camera phones, nearly everyone can
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capture and share important moments—
or ordinary moments. Travelers can have
a picture-conversation with friends back
home; college students can show Mom
and Dad that they’re actually going to
class. And while text messages often
carry as much emotional content as
early telegraph messages, a picture can
say more than a thousand words.
Those moments, Poisson believes,
can only occur among people who
already have close ties. Grayson Carter’s
life interests only those people sharing
it with him. So instead of broadcasting
photos to the world using social network-
ing services like MySpace or Facebook,
Radar encourages users to develop a net-
work of real-life friends—the kind who
will want to instantly share a sunset with
you or see the dinner you’re about to eat.
Keeping you connected to other people,
all the time, defines Radar’s mission.
R A DA R J O I N S a much-publicized boom
in social-networking services. But while
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online social networking remains domi-
nated by two main players, Facebook
and MySpace, Radar focuses on a differ-
ent market: mobile social networking,
aimed at cellphone users with limited
time and attention. The thinking works
like this: Social networking services that
allow users to make new connections
on-the-go could become even more valu-
able among professionals who put a pre-
mium on free time. Instead of logging in
to a webpage from a desktop computer,
users of the mobile network can receive
updates, e-mails, and now photos with
the push of a button. That immediacy,
coupled with a growing movement
toward lifestreaming (keeping friends
and occasionally total strangers plugged
in to your every action), could put ser-
vices like Radar at the forefront of the
next major evolution in social network-
ing. Facebook and MySpace offer mobile
versions of their services, but neither
has managed to repeat their dominance,
suggesting that mobile social networking
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Meanwhile, the success of consumer
smart phones such as the iPhone and
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to do more with their cellphones. What
they might want to do, and how much
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J O H N P O I S S O N ’ S “aha” moment came
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mulling over the problem with a Nokia
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 GROUND FLOOR

phones, he would build a new kind

of social network, one based on how
people actually use their cell phones.
Radar’s birth, he says, “happened on
April 4, 2004, at 4 in the morning. Four
fours. And four is a really unlucky num-
ber in Japanese culture but it certainly
proved fortunate for us.”
Unlucky or not, Poisson had his busi-
ness plan. Then came the challenge of
making it real.
Poisson had reached the end of his
contract with Sony, so he decided to
pursue the Radar concept on his own.
A number of angel investors helped the
company hone its business plan and
provided enough capital to get things
started. When Poisson arrived in San
Francisco, he started recruiting “friends
and friends of friends.” Francis Li, a
designer and mobile developer, came
onboard as vice president of product
design and development. Believing
design would prove crucial, Poisson
focused on simplicity, making the ser-
vice usable for everyone on every phone.
Simplicity and elegance would also
make it an easier sell for Ian Jeffrey, who
came from Montreal to coordinate the
start-up’s marketing.
By 2005, the Radar team had started
developing prototypes. Poisson met
with more investors, who responded
favorably. Mohr Davidow Ventures, as
well as individual venture capitalists like
Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito, gave the com-
pany $4 million. This took Radar out of
Poisson’s living room and into “serious
company” mode.
Investors see a bright future in Radar:
It just raised another $7.2 million from
Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capi-
tal firm. Radar’s business model also
appeals to advertisers, who can sponsor
“channels” on the site. Users subscribe
to these picture channels that appear
in-line with photos from friends. CBS, for
example, sponsored a public channel
for its reality series Big Brother, offering
video clips and behind-the-scenes pho-
tos. Fox promoted its action film Hitman
via Radar, and Warner Bros. created an I
Am Legend channel.

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 Because users choose their channel
subscriptions, the thinking goes, the ads
don’t feel as intrusive. Poisson draws
an analogy to magazine advertising: If
the ads are well-targeted and convey
valuable content, they will become an
accepted part of the reading experience.
Advertisers, of course, happily target
viewers who have already shown an
interest in their product.
Finding a way to court advertisers rep-
resents just one of the many challenges
facing the myriad mobile social-network-
ing start-ups. Vidya Drego, a Forrester
analyst, says, “At this point, there are so
many different start-ups in this space.
The competition is fierce; there are a lot
of great ideas out there.” Still, no single
service has managed to crack the puzzle:
Mobile social networking remains a
phenomenon well outside of the main-
stream. Until the users reach a critical
mass, whether in small, intimate groups
or in a large, Facebook-style horde, the
“social” aspect remains an ideal. When
that mass arrives, the next challenge for
services like Radar becomes monetizing
users’ attention. Just as Facebook and
MySpace have had difficulty turning their
massive user-bases into real revenue,
Radar and other start-ups still need to fig-
ure out how to make money from mobile
social networking.
As Drego points out, most consum-
ers remain undecided on—or simply
unaware of—the value of a Radar
moment. That means nobody knows
how much they might pay for it, or
whether the advertising-driven model
of Web 2.0 can support mobile content
companies. “The revenue model is very
difficult,” Drego says, “and I don’t know if
anyone has quite figured it out yet.”
Poisson acknowledges the challenges,
saying, “It’s hard to get them right. It’s
really difficult.” But he thinks he can
create a new kind of conversation and a
new kind of connection among people.
He believes in the Radar moment, the
one that’s happening right now.

Jesse Hicks is a freelance writer based in State

College, Pennsylvania.

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