Life Happens at a Location – Share Your Story

Where you are is crucial to remembering and sharing your experiences and making discoveries about the world around you.  Memes like the recent Twitter #WWY911 demonstrate the power of tying the question “where were you?” with important moments in life.

The Web of the Physical World

People share their life stories through status updates, photos, comments, links, videos, and more through services like Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter.  Incorporating location in your story with Whrrl adds context to everything you share, and with GPS in mobile devices it’s easier than ever before.

When I walked through the woods as a kid, I wondered if anyone had ever stepped on a particular piece of ground before.  Who were they?  What had they being doing here?

The character of a place is often evident in its visitors.  Imagine knowing the stories of the café where Hemingway wrote, the places where characters from Entourage hang out, or the theater where Lincoln was shot.  Aren’t you curious where Barack Obama goes for waffles?

Speeding Up Time-to-Discovery

Whrrl increases the odds that you’ll find serendipity in your daily life.  See what your friends are up to by keeping track of the locations they share.  Use collaborative filters to receive recommendations for places to go, based on the shared experiences within your network.

Tim O’Reilly discussed what we at Pelago call the “web of the physical world” last week in his Web Meets World talk at Web 2.0 Expo NY, and mentioned that services like Whrrl are early indicators in the emerging “instrumenting the world” trend.  The ability to deliver personalization based on GPS coordinates (and hopefully someday other factors like temperature, motion, or volume) is becoming a reality.

You might discover something new, like a breakfast place where people stand out in the cold for almost an hour any day of the week and occasionally meet their future spouse in line (Dish).  In my humble opinion, meeting the love of your life (human or omelet) is definitely a more meaningful payoff than you’ll get throwing sheep.

Protecting Your Location Sharing

Whether you share your where you are with the entire world, or just broadcast to a select group of people, with Whrrl you have complete control over who you share your location with.  Only Whrrl members on your People Who Can See My Location list are notified when you share where you are.

You can also broadcast your location to Twitter and your location will be displayed based on your privacy settings there.  Oh and by the way, if you’re a Twitter user, come follow us!  Happy storytelling!