In the Press
Whrrl Says It’s Up Next for Facebook ‘Places’ Partnerships
Christopher Heine, ClickZ.com
Facebook’s location-based cartel will evidently include more than the launch partners it rolled out last week. John Kim, VP of product management and marketing for Pelago, told ClickZ on Monday that his company’s Whrrl service will soon join Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and Booyah as an integrated Facebook “Places” partner.
Kim said his Seattle-based company has been in talks with Facebook in recent weeks and got its first glimpse of the Places APIs one day after the social site announced the platform on Aug. 18.
Beyond Foursquare: 5 Location-Based Apps for Your Small Business
Jolie O’Dell, Mashable.com
This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.
Foursquare is blowing up with megabrands like Starbucks and Jimmy Choo, but smaller businesses can find a niche with smaller location-based services, as well.
Working with location-based apps will help prepare your business for the day when checkin apps are mainstream — and given that Facebook has rolled out its own checkin features, that day could be sooner than you think.
Customer Loyalty 2.0
Kevin Spidel, GannettLocal Blog
Brand loyalty programs traditionally consisted of retention. Think of your grocery store buyers card, or your coffee shop punch card where the 10th coffee is free. Today, with conversations that are happening about services and businesses within social networks, loyalty have become about brand advocacy and empowering your customers to market for you. It has evolved into attraction of new customers by empowering your loyal customers to advocate and re-market for you. Customer loyalty is about the attraction of new customers as much as it is retention these days. Welcome to the world of “Customer Loyalty 2.0.”
Facebook’s 4 Big Rivals in Location-Based Technology
Kristin Burnham, ComputerWorld
Facebook announced yesterday its much-anticipated location-based service, Places. Places, which is currently available only on mobile devices that support HTML 5 and with a GPS or geolocation feature, is set to pose a threat to other more-established services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and Whrrl.
Facebook announced yesterday its much-anticipated location-based service, Places. Places, which is currently available only on mobile devices that support HTML 5 and with a GPS or geolocation feature, is set to pose a threat to other more-established services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and Whrrl.
Here’s what you need to know about the alternatives and how Facebook’s four big geolocation rivals stack up.
The passion of Whrrl
Simon Fuller, Brand-e.biz
The increased take-up of smartphones is resulting in a slew of services utilising a user’s location to provide info or make recommendations. It’s no surprise that brands are interested in how these location-based gizmos can help them, and with plenty of seemingly similar services out there – Foursquare, Gowalla, etc – there’s a lot of choice.
Enter US-based tech outfit Pelago with Whrrl 3, the latest evolution of the company’s geosocial networking app, which offers something a tad different.
How? Well, with the Whrrl app, iPhone and mobile web users experience a storytelling game linked to a location-based service. Players can use their locations to find what Pelago term ‘Societies’ – collections of Whrrl users who share their interests, whether that’s scouting out happening night clubs, or whipping up a good stir fry. The idea is that users interact with other members of their Society by sharing info or by relating an experience – by leaving a photo, for example. And then the game part of Whrrl kicks in, since users garner points for contributing anything which other users likes the look of.
3 Questions About Location-Based Social Networks with Whrrl Creator Jeff Holden
Neil Glassman, SocialTimes.com
Jeff Holden is the founder and CEO of Pelago, the company behind the Whrrl social media network. Pelago is at the nexus of two of the hottest topics in social media — geolocation and location-based applications. Social Times asked Holden about Whrrl, how it compares with its competitors and what might be coming up next.
The list of mobile location-based social networks has grown. How does Pelago see Whrrl’s place in the location-based universe?
Whrrl has a very clear focus, which is getting people out into the world trying new things. We’re fundamentally changing the way people explore and experience their cities. And the feature set and experience of Whrrl is very different from other products in this space as a result.
Location-based check-in data on its way to becoming a commodity
Jeff Holden, VentureBeat.com
Location-based “check-in” services like Foursquare, Gowalla, and my own service, Whrrl are becoming increasingly popular. These services allow mobile users to capture the places they visit in order to make their location visible to friends, to play location-based games (and earn badges or points) and to cash in special offers. While it’s still early days — Forrester recently published that only 4% of US adults have ever used a location-based mobile application — on the order of 20K users are joining just the top few services per day, with well over a million check-ins per day, and both figures are accelerating.
Whrrl: Living In Foursquare’s Shadow
Om Malik, GigaOm.com
If you’re a consumer geo-location startup, then you have to contend with one simple reality — a little company from New York called Foursquare. Not a week goes by that doesn’t have someone grumbling about the attention being lavished on Dennis Crowley’s company. But life does continue for other apps, including Whrrl – a location-centric discovery app developed by Seattle-based Pelago – which has raised nearly $22.5 million in funding from the likes of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Bezos Expeditions, T-Ventures and others.
Press Releases
More Press Releases »-
-
-
-
-
Whrrl on Facebook