BusinessWeek is announcing today the first investment from the Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) $100M iFund. The first company out of the gate is: Pelago with an application called Whrrl.
According to the press release, this is what Whrrl is about:
(side note, they should change the name because it is too similar to Twhirl - the Twitter Native Client).
Say you're lost in Las Vegas and need a restaurant recommendation. With iPhone in hand, you can scan the locations of nearby restaurants, just Italian restaurants, or just those recommended by foodie friends. Or you could search for the highest-rated bars or kid-friendly activities recommended by friends from your social network. There's going to be a "what's going on around me right now" button, says Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy. "You're always one button away from that immediate context."
The BusinessWeek article also mentions that KPCB received no less than 1700 proposals from companies seeking funding under this new fund. I'm pretty sure that a good percentage of these proposals were associated with location-based services in some way.
With the upcoming release of the 3G version of the iPhone (on June 9th at the WWDC keynote), it looks like the iPhone will be well positioned, for the sheer number of developers, to be the major player in the mobile location-based social networking space.
I'm currently looking, in depth at the iPhone SDK API, and I'm pretty sure that Apple created the ultimate mobile social networking device.
The only thing missing is for some entrepreneurs to unlock the right combination of features and functionality to make it a reality.
And there is a lot of people trying to accomplish that right now. When the AppStore floodgate opens in June, we will experienced a slew of those applications. Some brilliant, some ok, some atrocious. So don't jump the gun. The network will tell us which one needs to capture the flag.
Happy location reporting - Martin
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