So a coworker of mine used to work at this startup called Pelago. He said they were doing some cool things, but that they just kept getting things wrong. Though John Cooks venture blog, I read that they had launched. I went to try out the site, but an aggressive login wall (signup + confirmation before letting you even see the site) deterred me. Poof, they lost me. But here’s the really lame part. I had signed up on Pelago’s site to hear more about their products and launch, and only Monday did I receive this message
Thank you for expressing an interest in our progress here at Pelago. We’ve been keeping our work very quiet for a while and we appreciate your patience. We’re excited to announce the public availability of our first product, Whrrl.
http://www.whrrl.com
Whrrl is now available to the public and we’d like to invite you to join us. Go to http://www.whrrl.com to sign up.Whrrl is a Web and mobile experience at the intersection of local discovery, social networking, and user-generated content. It allows you to personalize your world according to how you and your friends think about the places and events in it.
- Share real-world adventures and discover places, events, and people.
- Change how the world looks based on your network’s activities and opinions.
- Tell your friends where you are, post notes, share photos, and schedule meetups with them.
- Use it on the Web or on your compatible mobile phone.
Read more about Whrrl in our Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.whrrl.com/faq.html) page.
Thank you again for expressing an interest in what we’re doing here at Pelago, and we look forward to seeing you on Whrrl!
Jon Landers
Senior Vice President of Marketing & Community
What gives? I express interest in your site early (many, many months ago) and I don’t hear anything about the launch until nearly 2 weeks later? Even TechCrunch covered the launch 3 days prior to their email to their ‘interested’ customers. And yet, their site (and logo) says Beta. Why not include us in the loop earlier? Take this a advice on how NOT to launch your startup.
Oh, and I never did get around to confirming an account on the site. I wonder how many other people feel burdened by that constraint.
