WHRRL BOLSTERS SOCIAL DISCOVERY SERVICE WITH NEW EVENTS FUNCTIONALITY

Whrrl, a
new social discovery service from Pelago, Inc., today announced added support
for local events, allowing users to tap into not only what, when, and where
events are happening, but also their friends’ specific opinions, interests, and
plans to attend. Whrrl is the nexus of social networking, local discovery and
user-generated content. As such, Whrrl provides a unique Web and mobile medium
for discovering and sharing local information and experiences with friends and
communities.

 

With the
new events capabilities, Whrrl users can find local events by searching via
event name, date, venue, geography, or by looking at lists of events their
friends are interested in attending. Once users find an event, they can easily
notify friends of their interest in the event and in turn view the interest of
their friends in joining. Event searches can be done through both Whrrl’s Web
site and mobile interface

 

Examples of
the types of events that Whrrl has added include concerts, performances,
exhibits, movies, plays and much more.

 

“Places and
events really go hand-in-hand – you often go to a club to see a band or you go
to the mall to see a movie,” said Jeff Holden, CEO and co-founder of Pelago.
“Now, any relevant information about local events is resident in Whrrl along
with the locations where they occur. What this does is make it so much easier
and fun for people to learn about what is going on around them and when.”

 

The Whrrl
service catalogs peoples’ activities, chronicling an individual history of
places visited and events attended through icons pinpointed on Whrrl’s built-in
mapping application. Whrrl users and their friends can then rate, review, and
comment on these places and events. This user feedback determines how a
location or event is represented on the Whrrl map – either as a positively
charged green icon or negatively charged red icon.

 

Whrrl
shares user-contributed information with others through a real-time micro-blogging
feature called the “Whrrld Feed.” Whrrl users check in via SMS, the Whrrl
mobile application, or the Whrrl Web site, instantly updating others on their
location or status through their Whrrld Feed. 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 also
has a powerful filtering feature which allows users to quickly find places and
events based on a combination of factual and social criteria like hours of
operation, distance from current location, cuisine type, show times and
friends’ ratings. This filtering capability in Whrrl opens entirely new
discovery pathways by allowing users to look at the map and search through the
eyes of the people they know and the places they go.

 

The Whrrl
service is available nationally with a database of millions of interesting
businesses and events. In select metro areas, Whrrl provides industry-leading
location data, going down to details like happy hours, and features ranging
from free wi-fi to fireplaces to outdoor seating. This deep data experience is
currently available in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego,
Austin, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington DC, Atlanta, Kansas City,
Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Miami, with more metro areas to come.

 

About
Pelago

 

Pelago,
Inc. is an early-stage company based in Seattle developing a new generation of
consumer experiences based on breakthrough technology, including Whrrl, a new
mobile and web-based service at the intersection of social networking and local
discovery. Pelago was founded by former senior executives from Amazon.com and
is backed by leading venture capital firms, including Kleiner, Perkins,
Caufield and Byers, Trilogy Equity Partners and Bezos Expeditions.