Whrrl to Worlds: Social and Geographical Surroundings Networked
I suspected there would soon be a site attempting to give users a handle on their social and physical surroundings. To combine social and geographical "peripheral vision" enabling people to know what their friends are doing and where they are. What you are doing + where you are = an event, which represents a profound change in the way we use the web/network. And there is:
http://www.whrrl.com/
"The people you know. The places they go" is their slogan.
The first question whrrl asks is "What are you doing right now?" There is nothing special in this since Facebook has used the same question to power The Wall (social blog/feed system) for some time. Next, you are asked "Where in the world are you?" Whrrl combines a social activity feed of Facebook with the lightweight asynchronous message system of Twitter or Jaiku with elements of various mapping systems.
Whrrl enables you to discover and keep in touch with your social and geographical surroundings. The only thing lacking might be three dimensional street level mapping to place you right in the representation of the physical world you and your friends inhabit.
As Whrrl's tour says "You can interact with everything" in the world around you. But not only can you interact with elements of the physical and geographical world, labeling, sharing, evaluating the physical world, the traffic on the street, the quality of a restaurant you've just eaten dinner at with a simple thumbs up and down voting system, you can also see immediately what your friends are doing and where they are, as well as share this "virtual content" overlaid on the world with them. Who knows where this will end? A merging of Whrrl with the virtual world, a kind of "Second Life" that follows you around in the physical world, populated with your friends, your friends of friends, familiar landmarks and points of interest overlaid with commentary?
Interestingly, for every point of interest, you can mark whether you have been there or indicate a desire to go there. This could be powerful marketing data. Think of how valuable it would be for the Baguette Box in Washington, DC to know how many people indicate a desire to visit? How valuable it would be to know where these potential visitors live. Do they live across the country or nearby? Who are they and what are their demographics?
In many ways, this is the same vein as farmfoody. We envisioned how helpful it would be to enable people to tell their friends about a great roadside stand they found, potentially while they are at the stand by using their cell phone to access our site. Although we have been reluctant for a variety of reasons to allow rating of independent farms, the ability to communicate this kind of information. We have a good start, we are going in the right direction, but we need to get moving, to bring this kind of combined social and geographical approach to the world of farmer's markets and independent farms.
http://www.whrrl.com/
"The people you know. The places they go" is their slogan.
The first question whrrl asks is "What are you doing right now?" There is nothing special in this since Facebook has used the same question to power The Wall (social blog/feed system) for some time. Next, you are asked "Where in the world are you?" Whrrl combines a social activity feed of Facebook with the lightweight asynchronous message system of Twitter or Jaiku with elements of various mapping systems.
Whrrl enables you to discover and keep in touch with your social and geographical surroundings. The only thing lacking might be three dimensional street level mapping to place you right in the representation of the physical world you and your friends inhabit.
As Whrrl's tour says "You can interact with everything" in the world around you. But not only can you interact with elements of the physical and geographical world, labeling, sharing, evaluating the physical world, the traffic on the street, the quality of a restaurant you've just eaten dinner at with a simple thumbs up and down voting system, you can also see immediately what your friends are doing and where they are, as well as share this "virtual content" overlaid on the world with them. Who knows where this will end? A merging of Whrrl with the virtual world, a kind of "Second Life" that follows you around in the physical world, populated with your friends, your friends of friends, familiar landmarks and points of interest overlaid with commentary?
Interestingly, for every point of interest, you can mark whether you have been there or indicate a desire to go there. This could be powerful marketing data. Think of how valuable it would be for the Baguette Box in Washington, DC to know how many people indicate a desire to visit? How valuable it would be to know where these potential visitors live. Do they live across the country or nearby? Who are they and what are their demographics?
In many ways, this is the same vein as farmfoody. We envisioned how helpful it would be to enable people to tell their friends about a great roadside stand they found, potentially while they are at the stand by using their cell phone to access our site. Although we have been reluctant for a variety of reasons to allow rating of independent farms, the ability to communicate this kind of information. We have a good start, we are going in the right direction, but we need to get moving, to bring this kind of combined social and geographical approach to the world of farmer's markets and independent farms.
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posted by Steve Knoblock at
11:49 PM
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