Whrrl for the iPhone early reactions…
Wow. Yeah, Wow. This is my 3rd Internet startup and the second early stage one but nothing beats a big hit product launch. Hindsight being 20/20 I wish we had actually hooked up the bell to the new user account creation event that we joked about, it would have saved everyone time hitting refresh on the internal stats page.
We’ve had a team working on our iPhone app since the SDK came out (while at the same time re-vamping the web and Whrrl Mobile too, and adding new metro areas with deep meta-data) and put a whole lot of blood, sweat, and tears into it along the way. Figuring out what from the full set of capabilities we have built into Whrrl from our web site and J2ME mobile application to implement as well as what to take advantage of from the nifty platform Apple provided. Doing User Experience for touch screens takes new thinking and keeping up with a changing SDK is always, err, an adventure 
Beyond nearly the whole company watching the internal stats for downloads and sign-ups to the Whrrl community, we’ve been surfing all of the places we can find feedback – iTunes, Twitter, blogs, and of course, feedback@whrrl.com. We’re super excited to have folks trying out the application and caring enough to give out feedback. After all, we built the product for our customers to use, that’s what drives us. If you’ve ever built software before you understand the “first drink after exiting the dessert” feeling of seeing feedback from customers on something you’ve worked hard to make.
In the short 3 days people have been playing with Whrrl on the iPhone some trends are emerging and we’re back in the saddle (if you know me you’ll recognize the liberal use of metaphors here <g>) making changes on the server and iPhone client side to address common complaints and improve usability on pieces that are confusing.
Seems the top complaint so far is that our map doesn’t zoom. We know. It was a hard decision but we made some implementation choices early on that ended us up on a “you cannot get there from here” spot on performance of the map when zooming so we disabled it for the first release. Sometimes you get these things right (or get away with them) and sometimes you don’t, that’s part of the game, right?
We added ‘jump to location’ as an alternative way to jump around the whrrld while we work on a new approach that will give us a snappy and engaging map as the center piece for the application. Stay tuned, we’ll have the new maps implementation out as soon as we get it done. In the meantime, you can use the location icon in the upper left corner to either use the built-in location-finder or to type in the name of a city, town, zip code, neighborhood or even a street corner or address and jump there immediately.
Another common confusion is regarding our filters feature. You access filters by the button in the upper right corner. The filters allow you to change the lens through which you see the Whrrld and the filters let you remove the places from the map or list that you are not interested in looking at. The filters screen also lets you search for a specific place like ‘Starbucks’ or ‘AMC’. We recognize that it hasn’t been discoverable or intuitive so we’re working on new UI to make them both easier to use and easier to discover this powerful feature – who else lets you ask for all of the coffee shops that are open now with free Wi-Fi?
Keep the feedback coming, we love to hear from our customers and keep Whrrling!
Jeff Ayars, VP Engineering
July 13th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I actually have a lot of ranting about location/social things in general that I’ll eventually document elsewhere, but I have a small subset I’ll share here. I’ve interacted with several new systems recently: Whrrl, Loopt, Brightkite, and Plazes the most. Each time, I approached the system with the same process: (1) Interact with the system on my own to see what it offers, (2) try to find others using the system to see how they are using it and possibly connect with, and then (3) introduce the new system to my family and friends. I’m sort of the canary in the coalmine deciding if it’s worth using before brining my friends into it.
Also, I’ve very iPhone biased, and that’s a factor. I abandoned Plazes pretty quickly due to no current way to interact with it on the iPhone, and the fact that Nokia acquired it doesn’t encourage me at this time, although they supposedly are still working on an iPhone app.
Now, Whrrl did ok with point (1) above on the iPhone was ok (I can see places but not others using Whrrl near me), (2) wasn’t possible from what I could tell (although I could do that on the main web site on my Mac), and (3) went ok because you sent requests by email. Loopt, by comparison was about the same at (1), failed completely at (2), and also failed at (3) due to their use of SMS for invites. However, Brightkite, even with no dedicated app but an iPhone specific web site, was completely usable at (1) and (2) as I could see “place streams” but in order to invite I had to do it at my Mac and not at my phone.
This is all first impression stuff, and unlike the zooming map problem, is more of a philosophy about the service. I like that Whrrl and Brightkite both allow me to explore what others are doing on the system, but I wish that ability was enabled on the iPhone app.
Good luck!
Reply to Jon
July 18th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
While i may have ranked it slightly higher, the 2 star rating on iTunes Apps shows the frustration of the average user. Me: well i can see the local dive bars and all. Not myself, not my friends. I get geolocated very accurately, but then in the friends section i am apparently located in Seattle, WA (wrong).
all myself and others really want is the buddy beacon thingermajig. I just want to see where people are at so on a friday night i can look at the iphone and know if my friends are within blocks when downtown… or if they are being a lamer on the couch with their iphone.
Reply to Al H
July 18th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
After 10 more minutes I figured it all out! It is best to use this with the internet site. Plus you can set your destination as any of the locations on the maps. It does not base my location off of my actual geo-location, but rather what i set it to online or on the iphone. Then i simply have to leave / reassign my location.
Much better than the SMS i have heard of, but cant you incorporate geolocation? Then we could all just drift around the map! Awesome proggy, i just need to get all my friends on board!
Reply to Al H
July 18th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Jon: Thanks for the thoughts, they’re inspiring me to write a post that addresses them. Keep an eye out for that one
Al H: Glad you’re figuring out how Whrrl works. It”s a lot more than a friend finder but we want friend finding to be killer so we are working in new features to let you be at a geolocation that’s not a place in Whrrl. Stay tuned!
Reply to Jeff Ayars