Location-based social network Whrrl has a new application for iPhone users called Whrrl 2.0. It lets you post photos and status updates that are tied to a geographical location. It includes integration with Facebook Connect and Twitter, meaning you can sign up and use the service with your Facebook credentials, and have your location updates and status updates from Whrrl cross-posted to both your social-networking profile and Twitter page.
Built-in privacy features let you pick how much of an update you want certain groups of people to see. For instance, when posting your location you can choose whether to give a certain group of people an approximation of where you are, or the exact location--complete with street number. You can also differentiate between the people you've added to your friends list, considering them as friends or "trusted friends," the latter of which can be given more information.
Instead of providing coordinates, or a little pin on a big map, the service will cross reference your locations with publicly listed buildings and locations which may save you a keystroke or two. It also remembers places you've been and will let you pick from a list of favorites.
The app packs all sorts of eye-candy goodness. Vibrantly color-laced menus pulse and pop up and over a large, user friendly map that you're able to zoom around on to see what other people are up to. It's not too over the top and gives it a very organic feeling. That said, the application is largely limited to your immediate surroundings. You can't search to see what people are doing in other cities without first befriending them, and the map only zooms out so far that attempting to cross to other parts of the country does not work. In other words a Loopt, this is not.
It is, however, possible to discover people in other cities from within the application although this requires digging through posted notes (usually the featured ones since you can't find these on the map) to find something interesting enough to warrant a friend request. In a dense urban setting this may prove useful, but I think the developers could go a long way in making the global stream of information easier to parse.
Existing Whrrl users with iPhones will love this application. Whrrl newbies, however, may be a little unsure how to start exploring what others are up to.
Whrrl's iPhone app lets you update your status to Facebook and Twitter, take photos, and see what other people are up to nearby. Click to embiggen.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Location-based social network Whrrl has forged a rather odd partnership with content provider HBO to place various fictional characters from the show Entourage as real users on its network.
Events from the television show will end up as annotated items on Whrrl's user-generated map. You can subscribe to whichever of the characters you want, and each of their items go into your central friends feed along with regular users who are providing "real" ratings and locational bookmarks. As the series progresses, locations seen on the show will continue to be placed on the map.
This is a novel move in a time when content is getting its own community-made fan characters. Some of the first signs of this were on Facebook with fake user accounts, then later fan pages administrated by fans once Facebook began to clamp down. Most recently, the trend has ended up on Twitter with characters from AMC's Mad Men and Marvel comics getting taken down by the parent companies who own that intellectual property.
You can find the various characters from the show on this page. If this ends up being a hit, expect it to leech out into other social networks and shows.
Whrrl now lets you follow characters from the TV show 'Entourage'. The characters will continue to update with events from the show as the season progresses.
(Credit: CBS Interactive)
Location-based social networking might be a clogged market, but it's still hot: Pelago, the parent company of mobile service Whrrl, is set to announce that the company has pulled in a $15 million Series B financing round. It'll be used for "strategic technology investments," as well as partnerships, which are crucial for mobile services that have to deal with cell carriers. Whrrl also hopes to expand across North America and into overseas markets.
The new cash comes from lead investor Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile Venture Fund, with contributions from Reliance Technology Ventures and DAG Ventures. Previous investors from Pelago's $7.4 million Series A round also added to the $15 million: Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Trilogy Equity Partners, and Bezos Expeditions.
There are a handful of location-based mobile services--Loopt, Brightkite, Rummble, Where.com, Yahoo's Fire Eagle--attempting to capture a slice of the market, and none have broken out since early leader Dodgeball was acquired by Google and proceeded to fade away.
So is the $15 million warranted? Maybe. Whrrl slightly differentiates itself from its competitors by using a graphical interface to show Yelp-like recommendations from friends. On one hand, it may be free from "stalking" criticisms that other track-your-friends services are subject to; on the other, Whrrl could be toast if a site like Yelp launches a similar mobile service.
We've covered Whrrl, and several of its competitors, already on Webware, but with the Where 2.0 conference coming up next week, I thought it'd be interesting to dive into this product just a bit more, since it represents some very interesting trends that are central to the creation of location-aware apps.
Whrrl is a fascinating project. The idea is that it tracks where you go, through your mobile phone, and makes that information available to your social network if you allow it. It also uses the behavior of other Whrrl users in general, and your friends in particular, to generate recommendations on places to go, and things to do based on behavior--not data entry.
For example, if you frequent a particular restaurant, you don't have to do anything; Whrrl will know it. But it will also know which of your friends go to the same joint and what other restaurants they hang out at. And then it will be able to recommend just those establishments to you.
It will also have the capability to show you where your friends are in real time. For an old guy like me, that's pretty creepy. But I think a younger generation of Facebook users might find it a natural extension to social networking.
Here are the trends that Whrrl illustrates, that I think we will see echoed a lot at the Where 2.0 show:
Whrrl tracks your real-world behavor. Scary? Sure, but also useful.
(Credit: Whrrl)
Collecting geodata has to be passive
There are interesting services that rely on users entering in their location, but that makes for a very different experience and, more importantly, a horribly incomplete data set.
If you want to get good data, you've got to do deals with the mobile carriers
Only a few handsets, like the BlackBerrys, allow developers access to raw GPS data. For almost all other phones--including the iPhone with its upcoming SDK--getting geo data means going deep into the machinery, and you cannot do that without the carriers or manufacturers giving you access. Sad, but true.
People have social network fatigue
No matter how cool a new mobile social app is, requiring people to sign up their friends to make it work will throttle its growth. A better bet is to allow people to leverage their existing social networks, like Facebook, as a starting point. But even then, new mobile social apps require some sort of buy-in from social net users to work. Until the big social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn get their own geo apps (not add-ons, but actual integrated features), I predict that growth of the mobile social products will remain limited.
Privacy is everything
The geo app companies are going to have to do a crackerjack job of "stewarding" (as Whrrl CEO Jeff Holden says) the personal location data they collect. They're also going to have to educate users on managing their geoprivacy. For an interesting take on this, see FireEagle. (See "You are here, sort of.")
Geolocation means more than GPS
Relying on the global positioning system only gets you so far. For one thing, only a small (but growing) proportion of existing mobile devices are GPS-enabled. For another, GPS is not accurate enough to identify behavior. Whrrl, for example, uses raw data from GPS receivers (on the phones that have them), in addition to proprietary analysis that includes group analysis of other users' signals and "dwell" time at certain coordinates, to determine not just where users are at a given moment but whether they are inside or outside a building.
Other geolocation technologies that matter are Wi-Fi location (see Skyhook Wireless, which Whrrl is partnering with), cell tower-reported location (which only provides a rough position centered around the tower), multiple cell tower triangulation (more accurate), RFID-reported data, HDTV signal-based geolocation, and of course user-reported location. Smart geo apps will be agnostic to the input method of geo data.
I'll be scanning for interesting new geo apps at the Where 2.0 conference next week, and will be sure to report on the Launchpad event Monday night when several companies launch new initiatives.
It's the year of social networks wrought with the mobile experience in mind. I spoke to five companies peddling their handheld experience as The Next Big Thing; here's how they stack up.
Bluepulse is the most advanced of the bunch, with a messaging service core and a profile, activity feed, and friend-of-a-friend discovery as other central activities. Messaging is easy. The single in-box shows status updates, all message types, and friend requests, and filters within this section highlight new messages and allow search.
You can post photos and 3G videos, but click-to-call is still under development. I dig the automatic spell check and basic grammar correction, but wish the messaging had a drop-down menu or predictive text to quickly choose from among friends. Unlike others, Bluepulse is purely mobile, operating on a slim and simple WAP site that never looks right from the desktop.
Based out of the U.K., Trutap has much more momentum abroad--in the U.S. the closed beta only works on AT&T and limits all-in-one IM to MSN, Yahoo, AIM, and ICQ services. Trutap is more a mobile facilitator than pure mobile social network in that photos and posts push to partner sites--Blogger, LiveJournal, Flickr, and so on. Trutap friends can also chat in-network.... Read more
There are very few essential differences between Whrrl and Rummble, two new social networks built on geotagging, ratings and recommendations within a trusted network, and an amphibian experience of comfortable operation on the Internet and cell phone.
Both Rummble and Whrrl pin users' whereabouts and ratings on a local map so their friends can see. Both also contain stealth settings to dissuade stalkers or shunned friends, and a manual mechanism for updating location if the phone isn't GPS-enabled.
The major differences between the reviews service and Yelp is mostly philosophical. Yelp, too, contains filters for whittling opinions to your network, and privacy settings to cloak your identity. Yet Yelp doesn't place you on a map for all to see, and won't help you schedule a meet-up as a result.
Whrrl's mapping key serves up ratings at a glance.
(Credit: Whrrl)Between Whrrl and Rummble, Whrrl is much more ready for prime time than Rummble, which is still locked into a closed beta and which sports a much plainer ("faster, more universal") mobile interface. Whrrl's mapping key is also much more meaningful than Rummble's. Yet Whrrl needs a WAP site to get smartphone users to jump on board, and to improve the way information is organized on the phone. And let's not discount Rummble's fancy behavior-based algorithms for adjusting the percentage of trust you have in your friends' judgment.
Whrrl's plans for behavior-based intelligence is linked to ad support. Thankfully not the location-based targeting that pummels pedestrians with coupons as they pass a shop; rather offers associated with actual patronage.
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