Thai whiz kid launches location-aware Twitter-like service

A 23-year old programmer in Thailand has launched a Twitter-like service that lets users add location-based information to their Facebook profile, website, or blog.

The Thailand-based service is called LetsProveWhere, and Peerapong Pulpitpatnan (aka “Pete”) developed it almost single-handedly in just three months. After a few days, he’s reporting about 100 registered users.

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Pete says he got the idea for the service from films like Deja Vu and Minority Report, because technology in those movies was able to record people’s movements automatically. He sought to create a program that would let users to do just that, especially from their mobile phones.

Right now, but for a couple of features (uploading pictures from mobile to LetsProveWhere as well as entering a location), Twitter may not have anything to worry about, because it enjoys plenty of momentum with its service, launched earlier and used by more people. But Pete has big plans: He envisions a real-time travel log service that lets you update text, pictures, video, and voice from mobile or computer — all formatted into embeddable maps. He says that people’s travel/location logs will be the new way to find travel information, potentially pitting him against the likes of Dopplr and ImThere.

Pete started work on LetsProve in November 2006, and his first creation was a project management tool, which he quickly left due to the product’s lack of differentiation from its competitors. After that, he launched LetsProveTV, a Thai-language video-sharing site after only three months of development. The site, which according to Pete receives 3,000 to 4,000 unique visitors a day, was a response to slow bandwidth in Thailand that cripples access to foreign sites as well as a government censorship that blocks most foreign video sites.

Thailand is still stuck in web 1.0, he says. And the few start-ups that are entering web 2.0 are, for the most part, Thai-language clones of foreign web apps. His LetsProveTV service falls into this category. But he has other directions for LetsProveWhere; his main focus is the U.S. and European markets (his servers are located in the U.S.), yet he’s partnering with a Thai telecommunications company to co-promote a package with lower rates for sending text messages.

Pete invested $3,000 of his own money in LetsProveWhere, money raised from a profitable investment in a document outsourcing company. He also generates revenue through AdSense on LetsProveTV.

For now he’s counting on viral growth spurred by tech blogs and friends sharing with friends, but he’s looking for $1 million funding to build a team and further develop his ideas to expand the service. If funded, he plans to move to the U.S.

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David Adewumi, a contributing writer with VentureBeat, is the founder & CEO of http://heekya.com a social storytelling platform billed “The Wikipedia of Stories.”

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