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SendMeHome Gets Social

Santa Barbara-based startup SendMeHome.com, which provides a free service to help people retrieve their lost items, has launched a new social feature the firm says will help connect people through objects. The new feature--called "Stories"--lets anyone with a physical object share stories, photos, or other information about that object to SendMeHome's internet site. James Tamplin, the site's co-founder, said that the new feature has been used by its beta users to write a collaborative novel, share cooking tips, discuss political events, and to transport a statue to Easter island. The new features take advantage of the site's identification labels to tie in text and photos to physical items. SendMeHome launched as a service which allows users to print out labels which can be attached to items in case they are lost, to help them get returned to owners. The founders said the new features--which layer in Google Maps, videos, and other social aspects--are meant to help web users "meaningfully connect" online with new and different people.