Give it a Whrrl: Service blends Net, friends' advice

— -- The Internet is handy for finding restaurants, stores and nightclubs, but word-of-mouth recommendations still rule.

Jeff Holden, 39, co-creator of a new service called Whrrl, hopes to marry the two. The goal: create a social discovery experience that combines the power of the Internet with the dead-on trustworthiness — and fun — of getting recommendations from friends.

"This is personalization for the real world," says Holden. "We're trying to help people find and discover things that there is basically no way to do today."

Whrrl is accessible from PCs or mobile devices, making it a true "two-screen" service, says Holden, CEO of Pelago, which created Whrrl. The service currently works with about a dozen Java-based wireless devices sold by Sprint s, AT&T tand soon, T-Mobile.

Darren Erik Vengroff, 40, Pelago's other co-founder, is chief technology officer. The two entrepreneurs met at Internet retail giant Amazon amzn, where they worked on consumer websites (Holden) and software design (Vengroff).

Early start at Amazon

Holden spent almost nine years at Amazon, arriving in 1997 before it was a household name. He met founder and CEO Jeff Bezos by chance in New York City at investment firm D.E. Shaw, where Bezos then worked. After Bezos left to start Amazon, he invited Holden to join him.

Holden says that when he decided to leave to start a company, Bezos was supportive. "He said, 'Let me know when you figure out what you're doing; I want to invest.' I was very flattered."

The business became Pelago — and Bezos has invested.

The Seattle-based company, using a patent-pending technology, has devised a way to use the Internet to answer common, but general, questions. (Example: "Where can I go to have fun tonight?") Search engines tend to respond to such vague questions with a mishmash, much of it irrelevant.

Holden says Whrrl's technology solves that problem. The magic ingredient is decidedly low-tech: personal recommendations.

With Whrrl, recommendations are used to form a personal "community" — friends, family and other approved contacts — for each user. The result is a list of recommendations tailored to the unique tastes and preferences of each user. "We light up your world by having your friends touch a place to illuminate it in your world," Holden says.

The recommendations also can be refined: If some friends have impeccable taste in restaurants, their guidance can be siphoned off to a special list. Ditto for pals with a good bead on, say, hot nightclubs or to-die-for clothing boutiques. The feature "is totally unique to this product," Holden says.

Another unusual capability: a feature they call "passive visitization" that can pinpoint the locations of friends and other approved contacts. According to Holden, Whrrl's GPS technology is so precise it can detect if a person is walking into a store or merely walking by. Tracking occurs automatically, if GPS-enabled cellphones are on.

Sharing on the go

Whrrl's GPS features, expected to go live in two months, also will allow users to share with others their day-to-day experiences with stores, restaurants and other places, including the names and locations. Whrrl even will alert users when an approved contact is near.

Those who don't want to be tracked can cancel the GPS function at any time, Holden notes.

Eventually, Holden says, Pelago plans to use the growing storehouse of information to work with advertisers on highly targeted ads.

How that might work: Let's say a local restaurant wants to draw traffic from a nearby neighborhood. Pelago could tap its database to identify potential customers with the right attributes — age, cuisine preferences and ZIP code — for that restaurant.

But that's later, he says. "All of our energy now is going into the consumer experience. At the end of the day, we don't have anything unless people love the product and want to use it every day."

Whrrl launched in October with advertising backing from American Eagle Outfitters. The tag line: "Our Planet, Your Whrrld." Until Nov. 19, the retailer will donate $1 to the AE Foundation, an environmental conservation group, for each customer who signs up for Whrrl through its website.

But to register for the service (whrrl.com), you must be willing to share a lot of personal information upfront — including your name, e-mail address, telephone number, mobile phone number and date of birth.

Some have privacy concerns

While some users may not balk at such requirements — along with the GPS capability — others see a darker side.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, says GPS-based services, in general, are tantamount to sanctioned spying. "This sort of surreptitious surveillance leads to manipulation of consumer preferences and consumer profiling in ways that are invasive."

Vengroff counters that, in Whrrl's case at least, users "are always 100% in control" of who sees their personal data and under what circumstances.

As for advertiser intrusion, Vengroff says they are banned from seeing a user's personal data. "No advertiser will ever see your name (or e-mail address) or have the ability to say, 'I want to target my ads' " to a particular user.

Holden and Vengroff both believe that Whrrl will prove itself to consumers. Says Holden: "Personalization (of data) will be so valuable to people that they will be saying, 'How did we get by before?' "

Pelago's backers apparently agree. First-round funding of $7.4 million came from legendary venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Other backers include Trilogy Equity Partners and Bezos Expeditions, controlled by Bezos. Seed capital of $500,000 came from Holden and Vengroff.

Holden says he's prepared to be surprised as Whrrl develops — hopefully in a good way. "If people want to use Whrrl — and we think they will — that's great, but I'm also sure that we're going to be surprised by the way that they wind up using it."