WHRRL Brings Mobile Social Discovery to the BlackBerry
SEATTLE – June 3, 2008 – Pelago, creators of the mobile social discovery service Whrrl, today announced new mobile support for the BlackBerry Pearl and Curve. Available for free to millions of BlackBerry users in the U.S., Whrrl provides a new mobile medium for discovering and sharing local information on people, places, events and experiences.
At the nexus of social networking, local discovery and user-generated content, Whrrl combines mapping and micro-blogging technology into a unique social discovery experience. Whether accessed via the Web or mobile device, Whrrl provides users with an entirely new discovery pathway for finding and sharing local knowledge with friends and communities.
The release of the BlackBerry mobile application coincides with expanded events and calendar features on Whrrl, giving users an unprecedented amount of relevant local information from their mobile device. Whrrl can be directly downloaded to a user’s BlackBerry for free at www.whrrl.com.
“This is great news for BlackBerry users looking for a new mobile application that combines the mega-trend attraction of social networking and local discovery into a fun and useful experience,” said Darren Vengroff, CTO and co-founder of Pelago. “And for us, it is just as exciting as the growth rate among BlackBerry users, particularly within groups outside of the enterprise, which is showing huge growth.”
The Whrrl experience captures a person’s activities, cataloging an individual history of places visited and events attended through icons pinpointed on Whrrl’s built-in mapping application. User ratings and reviews of these places and events then determine how each is depicted on the Whrrl map, color-coded as either positive, neutral or negative-charged icons.
The user-contributed information that generates the map icons is shared through a real-time micro-blogging feature called the “Whrrld Feed.” In addition to sharing ratings and reviews, users can also instantly update others on their location or status through their Whrrld Feed by checking in via SMS, the Whrrl mobile application, or the Whrrl Web site. To ensure privacy, users themselves set the specific group of friends that can see their actual real-time location; other users, even other friends, cannot see their location unless given specific permission by the user.
“Whrrl creates a new way to discover and navigate a city’s numerous places and events by leveraging the collective knowledge of friends, acquaintances, and neighbors against a detailed map of the area,” said Jeff Holden, CEO and co-founder of Pelago. “Now, anyone with a BlackBerry can tap this tribal knowledge while on the go to find information like nearby restaurants and which are highly liked and then share real-time status updates and invite friends to join.”
Currently, the Whrrl service is available nationally in the U.S. with an information database detailing millions of businesses and events across the country.
They state that the service currently supports the BlackBerry Curve and BlackBerry Pearl.
Check it out with your BlackBerry browser at: http://m.whrrl.com/
