BlockChalk lands $1M for community-based mobile messaging

BlockChalk, a mobile application that lets people leave messages for other community members, today announced it has secured a $1 million round of funding, the company’s first. The funding will be used to expand the company’s team as it looks for iPhone developers and server-side engineers.

BlockChalk, first covered back in January,  is a location-based mobile service available to iPhone, Palm and Android devices that lets users anonymously leave messages in different areas of a community or neighborhood. These messages can be anything from reporting crime to confessing your love for a neighbor. According to the company website, BlockChalk is in over 128 countries, 10,514 cities and 16,652 neighborhoods.

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While it might seem that leaving anonymous messages in your neighborhood could get out of control, the company has set up a list of guidelines. Some of these guidelines including keeping your messages locally appropriate and be respectful of others opinions.  BlockChalk also reserves the right to ask you to leave (just the application, not your actual neighborhood). Things that will get you booted include spamming, criminal activities or porn.

A number of investors joined the first round of funding, include Battery Ventures, Founder Collective, Harrison Metal Capital, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, Lotus founer Mitch Kapor, Josh Stylman, Tom McInerney and David Liu.

The San Jose-based company was created by Stephen Hood, the former product team lead for Delicious, and Dave Baggeroer of Stanford’s Institute of Design.

Competitors include EveryBlock, a startup purchased by MSNBC.com, and Facebook application Neighorhood.