Reliance Technlogy Ventures Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Reliance Capital (owned by ADAG) has invested in a US Based Social Networking Site – Whrrl.com.

I just checked out Whrrl.com and it’s basically a network that enables users to combine Location Based Services along with some social networking features. So a user can basically keep updating his or her status through various gateways. A local Dopplr (so to speak). Along with that there are the standard location rating features. Something that is very interesting is the fact that Whrrl also has a powerful filtering feature which allows users to quickly find places and events based on a combination of factual and social criteria like hours of operation, distance from current location, cuisine type, show times and friends’ ratings.

So quite clearly – Reliance Now has the ability to offer Location Based Services and Subsequently Location Based Ads. Along with that it also has a technology that can aggregate location statuses of multiple users. It also has the money for servers that can compute this technology.

This ties in perfectly with the launch of Big Maps. We had written a few days back about Big Maps and the kind of data that Reliance possesses. We had an inside source telling us that Big Maps is going to take atleast 2 more years to launch. This news makes me think we were wrong and that’s possibly why AlooTechie wrote about Big Maps being launched in 4 months.

It’s not clear if all this will be integrated into BigAdda or if BigMaps will have a separate network created around it. It makes more sense to integrate these technologies into BigAdda and then bolster up that platform (if anyone from BigAdda is listening – the UI, PLEASE work on the UI!)

Reliance Technology Ventures has also invested in Yatra – so we could see Reliance coming out with a travel related social network (the Dopplr kind).

Tried to get in touch with Haresh Bathija, a VP at RTVL, sent in a mail to their CEO Harshal Shah as well. Updates as they come.

In the press release, Harshal Shah, has indicated quite clearly that they are looking at LBS related revenues (although there isn’t any real reference to India) – “Pelago offers consumers and advertisers a unique proposition by combining local search and discovery with an underlying social networking flavor. While it offers consumers to discover, rate and review places and events, Pelago also enables advertisers to get better ROI through it’s highly precise location based advertising platform”.

• http://tinyurl.com/osm3ul

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