What’s happening with @TriOut ? A Location-Based Social Network for NC.

By Wayne Sutton Featured Geo-Location Social Media Startups February 25, 2010

If you’re live in the Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, NC area also known as the Triangle and/or follow me on Twitter I’m sure you have seen a few Tweets about @TriOut. TriOut which stands for Triangle Out is an idea that was first conceived in October 2009 by Lawrence Ingraham @Lawpower (founder of TriOut). Lawrence knew I was a fan of location-based apps and said we have the perfect community in North Carolina to launch our own location-based service. After a few meetings over coffee and iPhone app beta testing, I joined Lawrence in helping make TriOut go from an idea to a reality. Mostly in #vampiremode at night.

Fast forward 5 months later and last week we held a launch party at the RTP Headquarters with about 100 attendees and launched the website http://TriOutNC.com for non-iphone users and the community.

Ealier this week we emailed our first newsletter to our subscribers thanking everyone and announcing our first check-in special with 3 local Dairy Queen locations and a top 5 Empire Eats check-in contest. It has been a pleasure working with Lawrence and we’re excited about the future of TriOut. Thanks for the support NC and if you’re not subscribed to our email newsletter you can do so here and on our blog.

Take a look at our first email newsletter below from TriOut with more details about the launch party, check-in specials and our contest.

TriOutNC.com launches

Hello everyone

Last Wednesday, at the RTP Headquarters (@theRTP) around 100 people were in attendance from early TriOut beta users and bloggers, venture capitalists and, programers/developers, along with friends and family – as we officially launched TriOutNC.com and removed the invitation-only mode for the TriOut iPhone app. We would like to thank our sponsors and everyone who was in attendance.

You can read the official press release here and recap post here. Also check out some the photos here by John Rees.

Mad Treats, Inc, Dairy Queen Check-in Special

Another announcement we made at the launch party was our “check-in” special with Mad Treats, Inc. at 3 local Dairy Queen Locations.The current specials are available at the locations:

DQ Grill & Chill (New Bern Ave)

DQ Grill & Chill w/Orange Julius(Morrisville Carpenter)

DQ / Orange Julius (Brier Creek)

After you have checked-in you’ll see one of the following badges for either a Buy one Medium Blizzard, Get the Second Free or get $1.00 off any smoothie. From there just show the badge to the cashier to receive your TriOut “check-in” special.

Be sure to join us at the Triangle FreezeUp! FreezerBurns Live! @DQ on Monday, March 01, 2010 7:00 PM – 10:00 at the DQ Grill & Chill w/Orange Julius(Morrisville Carpenter) location hosted by Gregory Ng. You’ll recieve 10 TriOut points for attending and you can RSVP here: http://freezeup.eventbrite.com

Top 5 wins free $25 Gift Certificate at Empire Eats via Check-in Contest.

As some of you may have noticed every Monday morning the @TriOut Twitter account sends out a Tweet of the top 5 TriOut users for the week. With the new TriOutNC.com website you can see the leaderboard updating in real-time. We’re please to announce the Empire Eats Top 5 TriOut Check-in Contest for the week of February 22 – 28. The top 5 users for the week will receive a $25 gift certificate at one of the following Empire Eats locations below. You can read the full contest details including how to get points here.