Footstreaming with Whrrl v2.3

With the latest Whrrl release for the iPhone (v2.3) that launched today, we’ve introduced a term that I’ve talked about since 2006:  ”footstream.”  It’s a term we coined to describe something a tad geeky, but which we believe will have profound positive consequences on the way people live their lives.

A footstream is simply a digital record of the places a person goes in the real world. To be clear, “place” is different from “location,” by which people usually mean a point on the planet specified by latitude and longitude.  “Place,” as we’re using the term, means a named entity, one that generally has an address in the real world, like the Starbucks at the corner of Spring and Third in Seattle.  We like latitudes and longitudes, but we’re fanatical about place, because it is so much more semantically rich than location.

My footstream, then, contains the specific restaurants, parks, bars, movie theaters, hotels, ferry terminals, grocery stores, clothing stores, cleaners, coffee shops, auto repair shops, amusement parks, museums, golf courses, gyms, book stores, campus buildings, department stores, and so on that I have visited.  In other words, it’s a collection of the places I care enough about to physically go there.  There is a lot of information in my footstream; in fact, it’s a powerful expression of my identity.

I gave a talk at the Where 2.0 conference earlier this year in which I attempted to explain why footstreams are so important. I drew an analogy to clickstreams on the Web, sharing several examples of how massive value has been created leveraging clickstreams, from Google’s relevancy ranking algorithms and cost-per-click advertising to Amazon.com’s and StumbleUpon’s personalization technologies.

Similarly, we believe we can unleash vast new value propositions built upon footstreams.  Our promise to you:  with footstreams, we can unlock discovery and social opportunities in the physical world of a kind never seen before.  Our mission with Whrrl is to increase the possibility of adventure and human connection in our real-world lives, and to us this means helping people to break out of their standard social patterns, e.g. going to the same five or six restaurants, and introducing them to remarkably relevant places to go and experiences to have that they otherwise would not have discovered.  Imagine having visibility into others’ footstreams — others who you care about, e.g. your friends or people who share some passion with you.  What places would pop up on your radar screen that you would never have thought to look for?  What kinds of new experiences within places would you discover?

What makes this difficult is that while clickstreams are intrinsic to the Web — by nature of the fact that the Web is already a fully digital experience, every click is already digitized — the places people go is as analog as it gets.  How can we capture the places people “click on” in the physical world?

If you haven’t heard the term “check in” (outside of the hotel context), it is the mechanism Whrrl uses for a person to say “I’m here” wherever they are (perhaps in a hotel!)  When you arrive at your favorite coffee house, you check in.  When you get to the office, you check in.  When you go out for happy hour, you check in.  The nice thing about checking in, beyond the fact of adding the place to your footstream, is that you completely control when you’re “on the grid” and who can see your current location.

Whrrl v2.3 – You, As Your Footstream

Up through v2.2, Whrrl has been primarily about “storytelling.”  This was a step toward our vision, though most of the Whrrl “iceberg” has remained below the surface of the water.  While capturing the place where a story happened was an extra in Whrrl v2.2, you’ll see that checking in takes a very central role in Whrrl v2.3, and you’ll find some cool new benefits for doing so (beyond having the place context associated with stories).

In Whrrl v2.3, you express yourself through the places you go and the people you spend time with in the real world.  You’ll see this come through loud and clear with this release, particularly on your Whrrl profile page.

Note:  Some of the new features I talk about below, like Whrrl Societies, tidbits about your social relationship with places and most of the website changes will turn on in the next couple of weeks.  Honestly, we thought Apple was going to take longer to approve our app, given it’s the holidays, but they did it in 6 days!  Rest assured that all of your check-ins will count toward Societies and be reflected in your footstream.

By checking in everywhere you go, you’ll establish patterns.  Are you a Starbucks person or do you eschew the big chains in favor of independent coffee houses?  Fast food or foodie?  Do you seek out brewpubs and microbreweries, or is PBR your beverage of choice?  Whatever your patterns, you’ll find yourself being accepted into Societies of the real world, an entirely new concept in Whrrl.

Every Society is a mini-community of people who share similar patterns.  Since footstreaming patterns are, literally, voting with your feet about the places that are important to you, therein lie expressions of passions.  Are you a diner person?  How about dive bars?  Value shopper or is quality the only thing that matters?  Which comic book stores are the real deal and which are posers?  At which places are you a “regular?”

We can’t wait to see where the Whrrl community takes Societies, and we have some very cool surprises in store that will make Societies super powerful and fun.

You’ll also see ongoing feedback about your social relationship with places.  When you check in somewhere, you might learn which of your other friends have been there, discover that you’re the 2nd most frequent visitor or learn that someone you know is there right now.  The more of your friends who Whrrl, the more interesting and fun these little tidbits become.

Of course, as with previous Whrrl versions, you’ll be able to fully capture your experiences at places as photos and notes.  Also as before, you can check in with other people and collaborate on your story.  And you can share whatever you’re doing in Whrrl with your existing Facebook and Twitter networks.  We’ve made improvements to these areas of Whrrl, e.g. the ability to “like” slides (which enables real-time polling, too!) and share individual slides to Facebook and Twitter.  We hope you love these new capabilities!

We’re incredibly excited about this release, but know that there is much, much more to come:  we’re already hard at work planning the next release.  We’d love to hear your feedback, positive or otherwise, about Whrrl v2.3 (especially when all the features are turned on!  J).  Don’t hesitate to shake the phone for feedback or just send a note to feedback@whrrl.com.  (Just so you know, I read every single one of these.)

Jeff Holden is the CEO and Founder of Pelago, makers of Whrrl. You can read more about Jeff here, or find him on Whrrl here.