Whrrl Brings Mobile Social Discovery to Noise Pop 2008

SAN FRANCISCO & SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Whrrl, a new social discovery service from Pelago, Inc., has been named the official web and mobile sponsor of this week’s Noise Pop 2008 festival in San Francisco. Creating the intersection of social networking, local discovery and user-generated content, Whrrl provides Noise Pop attendees with a unique mobile medium to discover and share information about the festival with friends and groups.

Every year, Noise Pop takes over the best-loved venues in San Francisco for six nights to host unforgettable performances by nationally-known indie rock, electronic, punk and cutting edge musical artists teamed up with the best local bands. This year’s festival takes place from February 26 – March 2 and marks its 16^th year as San Francisco's premier celebration of independent music, art, film and culture.

As the official web and mobile sponsor of Noise Pop 2008, Whrrl puts the entire festival at one’s fingertips via a mobile device. The Whrrl service combines a massive wealth of factual information on locations and events with the ability to share subjective information on these same places and events in the form of reviews and comments. For Noise Pop 2008 in particular, the result is a unique festival discovery experience that allows attendees the ability to find relevant information on venues, artists and performance times as well as share and discover the location of their friends and their concert experiences in real-time, all from a cell phone.

Noise Pop 2008 attendees will be able to sign up for the free Whrrl service by texting the code “NP” to Whrrl (94775). Once registered with Whrrl, festival-goers will be able to use their mobile devices to access information about the various venues, their locations, artists and performance times. Noise Pop attendees will be able to share their locations in real-time as each venue will promote its own Whrrl short code that people will use to “check in” and instantly broadcast to friends their specific location. Whrrl will also allow status updates whereby concert-goers can share their thoughts on particular performances with others in real-time.

“With this year’s Noise Pop featuring more than 100 artists performing at nearly 20 venues across the city, Whrrl provides a perfect way for festival-goers to discover and share with others in real-time all kinds of information on venues and performances,” said Jeff Holden, co-founder and CEO of Pelago. “And since Whrrl users can broadcast their location and status in real-time, it will make it easier for friends at separate venues to not only find each other, but also to share information on how a show is going or what the scene is like at that venue.”

Whrrl provides a new consumer experience that catalogs a person’s activities, chronicling a history of the places one goes and providing a way to share those experiences with the people they know. Whrrl opens entirely new discovery pathways by allowing users to look at the map and search through the eyes of other people they know.

The Whrrl service is available nationally with an initial, deep content focus in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Chicago, Boston, New York, Washington DC, Atlanta, Kansas City, Phoenix, Philadelphia, and Miami.

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.