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Whrrl: Map and Mobile-Centric Social Reviews

Posted: 02 Nov 2007 07:43 PM CDT

Sometimes products are easy to sum up in single sentences, sometimes they are most definitely not. Whrrl, a new site by Pelago, is one of those that eludes definition. Hence, Pelago’s need to describe it unhelpfully as “a seamlessly integrated Web and mobile experience that is social, useful, and fun” (I admit, my headline’s not that much better).

Let’s start with the fundamentals and go from there. Whrrl is at heart a social network, as are many websites we see these days. But it’s a social network with a purpose (or, several related purposes, as we shall see). Members primarily use Whrrl to share their opinions and knowledge about local outfits, such as restaurants, bars, retail stores, and hotels. In the spirit of Yelp, users can find basic information about establishments and then, more importantly, share reviews of them (with brief descriptions and a star rating system). You can also write simple notes that correspond with particular locations, notes you can choose to share with all Whrrl members or just your friends.

Whrrl is also a mapping service of all the establishments that can be reviewed. After signing up for the site, half your screen will be dedicated to an interactive map provided by Google on top of which Pelago has dropped identifiers for your local establishments. Scan the map to find local outfits and click on their dots to pull up reviews and basic information about them. If a certain store or restaurant has been reviewed favorably or unfavorably overall, its dot on the map will indicate that fact. Opt to see indicators for establishments that have only been reviewed by your friends, or choose to view the map aggregating everyone’s contributions.

If you don’t want to find establishments using a map, you can use the Whrrl Sifter tool to perform a keyword search and then specify criteria (e.g, cheap, open now, baked goods, within 5 miles). No matter how you explore local destinations, Whrrl is intended primarily to help you share your experiences with friends. If you click on someone’s name anywhere that it is referenced, you’ll be shown on the map some of the places they have reviewed or rated.

Whrrl is also a mobile application for two main reasons: Pelago provides a full-featured version of the site for mobile devices, and soon you will be able to track your friends via GPS (if they let you). While most of the reviewing will take place on a computer (since many people don’t have mobile devices that make typing easy) you can access the site’s reviews on a map using your handheld. This makes it easier to figure out where to eat when you’re already out on the town. You can also post images and receive alerts about your friends activities from your phone. If your friend rates a place nearby, you can bookmark it for later.

As for the GPS, Whrll will be competing with other tracking services like Loopt to provide a way for your friends to find out where you are currently located. If you install the software on your phone and choose to share your location with friends on a white list, they will be able to see you real time on Whrrl’s map. Pelago says they have been working on a patented probablistic model to ensure that people’s locations are reported accurately. The system will report the actual establishments your friends are at, so you don’t even need to look at a map. The GPS functionality is all optional of course, and if you turn it on, the software on your phone will even ask you from time to time whether you still want it on. This is to prevent someone from tracking you without your knowledge.

As for the future of Whrrl, the company is adding more support for events. Currently you can use the system to tell your friends when you’ll be at a certain location. In the future, there will be more information in Whrrl associated with events (you’ll be able to add reviews of them, for instance). Pelago is also working on more ways to get information into the system. They contracted out to a team in the Philippines to manually collect all of the basic information about food and drink establishments currently in Whrrl. In the future, they will collect more information about non-restaurant establishments and eventually will turn the system into a wiki of sorts so users can edit most everything.

Pelago raised $7.4 million last November from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Trilogy Equity Partners. They are currently running a promotion campaign with American Eagle to get the word out to Whrrl’s target demographic, 18 to late 20 year olds. Robert Scoble recently recorded an interview with Pelago CEO Jeff Holden

Maps & Local reviews

Q&A with UpNext, a local search and mapping company

A four person start-up called UpNext has taken local search and mapping and added some very impressive twists — stepping right onto territory occupied by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft.

The New York City company has created a fully 3D map of Manhattan and made it easy to explore. As with any local search engine, you can search for businesses and specific locations, but with UpNext, that’s not really the point. With the ability to pan, zoom, and rotate the city map in any direction and add visual layers to find restaurants, hotels, transportation and recreation spots, UpNext allows you to investigate any neighborhood in the city without having to go there first. It is sort of like a combination of Google Earth and Virtual Earth mixed with a dose of video games, and it has a spotlight feature, which automatically highlights interesting locations as you browse a neighborhood. The layers are more refined than those of Google Earth. So for example, instead of looking generally for places serving food, which can get visually overwhelming, you can refine the search to find only lounges.

It has produced a Facebook app that replicates that map in the social network but adds the ability to tell your friends where you’ve gone, see where they’ve gone, read their reviews, and more. Today, we talked to the company’s four founders, led by Danny Moon. The Q&A is below.

Citysearch, Merchantcircle connect their local business services

Citysearch, an online guide service about local US businesses, has partnered with MerchantCircle, in an effort to hold their own in the increasingly competitive area of local reviews.

The move comes as Citysearch is under attack from newer, fresher sites like Yelp, which offers reviews about locales and is appearing as high, if not higher than Citysearch in search engine results.

Citysearch, a division of IAC, has a large collection of local data that includes 14.5 million business listings, more than 600,000 user reviews, and ratings on more than two million business locations in the US. It has been growing through acquisitions, having purchased local review site Insider Pages earlier this year (our coverage).

MerchantCircle, which has already received funding from Citysearch, has been growing fast. It launched in June of 2006 with 5,000 merchants using its services — today it has 300,000. The Los Altos, California company lets businesses create a homepage with basic business information (including photos and videos), create online coupons, send email newsletters to customers and more. The company tells us its most successful feature is its reputation manager, a tool that automatically aggregates reviews and directory listings about a company from around the web.

The partnership will allow MerchantCircle to aggregate Citysearch data, and take advantage of Citysearch’s local ad network. Citysearch will use MerchantCircle’s software.

Of course, these companies are competing against many other also trying to provide local information more efficiently.

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL are all working on local search offerings. Google, for example, has both local search and local mapping services that many find useful. Then there are startups like local-review site Yelp and local search engine Grayboxx. Then, there are companies like accounting software company Intuit, which are trying to buy their way into local business. Earlier this week, Intuit purchased business web services company Homestead.

The Citysearch-MerchantCircle partnership will run deep. MerchantCircle will offer Citysearch marketing programs to its members, MerchantCircle will use Citysearch’s local and national ad-sales teams to help sell ads on its site to advertisers, and IAC will get a seat on MerchantCircle’s board.

Besides Citysearch, MerchantCircle has also taken on funding from Rustic Canyon Partners, Scale Venture Partners and Disney’s Steamboat Ventures.