Whrrl was in the news recently because of a $15 million round announced by corporate parent Pelago. Carrier T-Mobile was an investor. Recently Vodafone bought mobile social network and contacts manager Zyb. (This will be the outcome for a lucky few of these companies.)

Whrrl is coming out with an iPhone application (article) that may represent a big, early opportunity to gain traction among users. On the desktop there's really no compelling reason to use Whrrl (vs. Yelp or Facebook, etc.). However, in mobile the company says it has a highly differentiated product.

Whrrl tracks user location passively via GPS (there are privacy controls) and can make all sorts of content and entertainment recommendations based on simply following users and where they go. In this regard it's not unlike Grayboxx, which inferred recommendations from a range of data. This is more direct. It also allows users to locate one another, which is an alternative but related use case.

We spoke with CEO Jeff Holden last week. Holden used to be with Amazon and there's a direct analogy between Whrrl's strategy and technology and Amazon's recommendations (Medio CEO Brian Lent was also at Amazon).

This "recommendations engine" approach is not unique certainly -- Zync, among others, was developing something similar on the desktop before being acquired by uLocate. But Whrrl's strategy and data collection methodology is "game changing" according to Holden.

The challenge will be to gain users and show them that "game changing" capability. The mobile-social networking segment is already very "noisy" before there's been virtually any adoption. That's why the iPhone application is very important to Whrrl. The company also has plans to expand into Europe so there's a very large market the company is targeting. But as with any user-generated content system or social network there's a chicken and egg problem to overcome.

However the company is in the "mobile sweet spot" with "entertainment" and location-based services. And beyond the big desktop social networking brands' early leads in mobile, there's something of a "green field" out there.

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Related: Whrrl launches on Blackberry.