Whrrl Raises Big Money

Some exciting news for the LBS industry today. Pelago, parent company of Whrrl, raised $15M in a Series B round from some heavy hitters including T-Mobile. When I first read the story I thought 2 things:

1) Great to see geo-related, "where 2.0" companies raising serious cash. The phrase, a rising tide lifts all ships, comes to mind.

2) What are they going to do with all that money? This is $15M on top of the $7.4M already raised.

According to the press release and blog posts, the money will be used to quickly grow into new markets in the US and abroad. This is a smart team (ex Amazon veterans) backed by smart money (Kleiner Perkins, Jeff Bezos), but $22M+ seems like a lot of money for what is now a service built on top of Google Maps. It is an interesting service with some nice twists on LBS, but not one that on the surface seems to need that sort of cash to expand.

My guess, and this is not based on anything but pure speculation on my part, is that Pelago/Whrrl will be building out their own location based advertising platform which will require time, resources and therefore cash.

Geotargeted ads are the holy grail (or Crystal Skull) for location based services. A lot of people are focused on the building of services (Brightkite and Loopt come to mind), but fewer are focused on the advertising portion. The idea that a relevant ad can be delivered to me on my phone in a non-obtrusive manner has yet to be mastered.

Whrrl can combine both your past actions (place's you've been, reviews you wrote) plus your current location to deliver targeted ads. This is demographic/ psychographic/ geographic/ "fill in the blank" graphic, gold for advertisers.

Perhaps Whrrl will become the AdSense for location based services. (Blogger Greg Sterling has written some excellent posts related to this topic.) If not, I would like to know what they plan to do with all that cash.

(Note: I do not know what kind of relationship they have with carriers and how much having access to those companies might cost.)

Share This Post

Where 2.0 Recap

There are plenty of great live blogging posts and recaps of Where 2.0 on the web. I just wanted to post some of my own thoughts about the conference.

Data and Open Data
This seemed to be a big theme this year. Google, Yahoo, ESRI and others announced greater access to data through API's. This is a positive move forward for the geo community as access to better data will leader to greater innovation.

Geotagging is hard (from Flickr)
I really enjoyed the Flickr presentation on geotagging photos and the difficulty associated with it. This was not the primary message they were trying to share, but that is what I took away from it. Getting down to the neighborhood level is hard enough but real value comes when geotagging occurs at the address or street level.

Monetizing Geo
Greg Sterling led an excellent panel on the challenges of monetizing the geoweb. It seemed like no one had truly figured out the Map Adsense model yet but plenty of people are trying. I liked the honesty of the panel in stating that no true model has emerged yet. I spoke briefly with Greg after the panel about the challenges we are seeing and discussed the idea of a Local Adsense from an IYP led group. Whether this happens or not, there are many newer players in the marketplace who are aiming to take over this large, very large market. Let me know if you are in the space, we would be happy to speak with you.

Streetviews and Geobrowsers
In the exhibitors room, I was surprised at the number of streetview and geobrowser companies. All the demos they had on display were very impressive and it just speaks to how far the geoweb has come.
Google, Everyscape and Mapjack were some of the companies showing off a streetview technology. And it looked like there were 4 geobrowser companies showing off impressive globes.
As we see geo data becoming more open and shared, will next year's conference have an annoucement that someone is opening up streetlevel pictures and 3D models to the community. Probably not, but we will see.

The Inside (from Mok Oh of Everyscape)
A very interesting presentation from Mok Oh, CTO of Everyscape. He talked about how Everyscape is emphasizing the inside as much as, if not more, than the outside. And with their ambassador program, they are looking for users to help them achieve this.
His demo of the Boston bar Cheers, from the TV show, was a great example of why the inside should be given more weight.
If Everyscape is able to "map" a large percentage of the inside for certain markets, this will give them a great advantage over others and the ability to license this content.
While I don't think this will happen, imagine the scene in Ocean's 11 where George Clooney and Brad Pitt are looking at the floor plans for the Bellagio. Perhaps in Ocean's 14, they will be looking at an Everyscape layout while using the tagging feature to plan their next caper.

Best Presentation - History's Best Geo-Hacks (Part Deux)
Chris Spurgeon had the most enjoyable presentation of the conference. Being an avid reader of history, this one really appealed to me, personally. Hopefully there is a video of his presentation as simply seeing the slides do not do it justice.

Share This Post

UpNext at Where 2.0

We will be at the Where 2.0 conference this week in Burlingame on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Last year, we were part of the Launchpad event which was the first time the public saw UpNext. It was a great event and we met tons of people in the space. That is why this is one of our favorite events of the year.

This year we going as observers and look forward to hearing from a great roster of speakers and seeing some interesting demos. We have been working on some cool stuff so if you want to see it, just track me down at the conference.

Email: dmoon [-a-t-] upnext [-d-o-t-] com
Twitter: dam00n (those are zeros not the letter "o")

Should be a great conference. Looking forward to meeting some great people and seeing some very interesting new ideas and tools in the geo world.

Share This Post

JavaOne Duke's Award: Java Everywhere

It was announced today that UpNext won a Duke's Choice Award under the category, Java Everywhere. The awards will be handed out tonight at the JavaOne conference.

Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced the winners of the sixth annual Duke's Choice Awards. The Duke's Choice Awards program recognizes the year's most influential Java technology-based applications submitted by developers and companies around the world. The winners are chosen by Vice President and Sun Fellow James Gosling, along with a panel of Java technology experts at Sun. (Sun Press Release)

We are very honored to receive this award. This really highlights the work that Raj and Vik have put into UpNext. Working with these guys has been an amazing experience and it is great to see their accomplishments recognized by Sun and the Java community.

Stop by our booth in the Java Playground if you are around and say hi to Raj and Vik, who are having a blast at the conference. Also, we are demo-ing some cool new things at JavaOne the we have not shown before. So stop by, check it out and let us know what you think.

Share This Post