VentureBeat

As more location-based services come out, one definite problem I’ve been experiencing is a lack of membership. That is to say, most of them work great, but no one I know really uses them, making them fairly useless. Whrrl, the location-based social network has a new feature today that may up its adoption.

The service had teamed up with Deep Focus which handles the marketing for the cable television channel HBO to promote the hit show Entourage. Entourage follows the exploits of an up and coming actor in Hollywood who has brought his friends along for the ride (his “entourage”).

This promotion isn’t a straightforward advertising campaign however. Instead, all of Entourage’s primary characters now have Whrrl accounts. This means that you can follow what bar Turtle, Drama, E and Vinny Chase (characters from the show) are in. Or find out where super agent Ari Gold is screaming at his assistant Lloyd.

Of course all of this information is fake — as these characters are fake, but it’s still kind of fun. It adds a fictional element to the service and allows for deeper interaction with Entourage if you love that show. This reminds me of how another hit show, AMC’s Mad Men, has its characters on Twitter (though they weren’t actually created by AMC, and the channel tried to remove them before realizing that was stupid). Many users of the micro-messaging service are following the tweets of characters like Don Draper and Roger Sterling while they talk, in character, to other Twitter users.

Whrrl will allow users to add individual Entourage characters as friends, or follow the group as a whole. In addition to location updates, there will be character commentary much like I described above for the Mad Men characters on Twitter.

It will be interesting to see if certain locations in the series (with is primarily based in Los Angeles) become more popular when users start getting updates from the Entourage guys. That could add a whole other marketing layer to this.

Whrrl’s parent company Pelago raised a $15 million second round back in May. Pelago was also the first company in venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers‘ portfolio to join Kleiner Perkins’ iFund, the $100 million fund which the firm set up to spur iPhone application development. Its iPhone app launched in July with Apple’s App Store. The service is also available on a wide variety of other mobile devices.

Entourage’s new season starts on Sunday. Find out more about the promotion here.

[photos: HBO]

Hollywood creators may be increasingly interested in VC money, but they’re happy to accept old-media dollars, too. Take Funny or Die, the Sequoia-backed online video site started by actor Will Ferrell and director Adam McKay, which just sold an equity stake to HBO.

The size of the deal hasn’t been disclosed, but Variety reports that HBO’s stake is less than 10 percent. In exchange, HBO gets 10 half-hour programs from the Funny or Die team, which also includes Knocked Up director Judd Apatow. Possible joint efforts for the future include live tours and a block of Funny or Die programming on HBO.

Interestingly, in all the praise for Funny or Die’s brand and voice, neither company says much about HBO involvement in the site itself; in fact, the site seems almost incidental to the deal. This is really about the talent, not the site — recruiting high-profile names like Ferrell and Apatow must be pretty tempting for HBO, even if FunnyorDie.com never shows a profit.

So the news doesn’t necessarily dampen our earlier skepticism about Funny or Die’s business plan, at least when it comes to making money from online videos. That may not be a problem for the startup, since it’s moving beyond the web. Similar sites, however, will probably find that’s a hard path to follow, especially if you don’t have a movie star on your founding team.

Here’s the latest action:

Icahn considers his own proxy war for Yahoo — Billionaire investor Carl Icahn began buying massive amounts of Yahoo stock last week — up to 50 million shares — and now is thinking about using that influence. He is considering replacing some of Yahoo’s board members (not quite the full replacement Microsoft was considering) with those of his own choosing, according to CNBC. Such a move could potentially force Yahoo to sell to Microsoft. The problem? The Microsoft offer is no longer on the table, and there is still no indication that it would come back even if Icahn is successful — though something tells me it would.

Craigslist countersues eBay – Just two weeks ago, online auction site eBay filed a lawsuit against online listing site Craigslist for taking unspecific actions to lessen eBay’s economic interest in the company (eBay owns a minority interest of Craigslist). Now Craigslist is returning the favor, charging eBay with unlawful and unfair competition, misappropriation of proprietary information, deceptive passing-off, business interference, false advertising, phishing attacks, free-riding, trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and breaches of fiduciary duty, according to its blog. With minority partners like these, who need enemies?

Google Search to be bigger than Windows next year — Some people still look at Google and wonder what exactly it does to make so much money? Next year, those people will be even more confused as Google’s search business is on track to surpass the size and profitability of Microsoft’s Windows business, according to Silicon Alley Insider. As SAI notes, this is just Google’s search business, this doesn’t even include its advertising wing, AdSense. Now perhaps you see why Microsoft so badly wants to becomes a legitimate online player.

Fisker Auto seeking a large round of funding — Fisker Automotive is seeking more funding to produce a $40K sedan in a few years, according to CNET. It is currently working on an $80K sports car. The back story here is that Fisker is competing with Tesla, which has the $100K Roadster (which was at the VentureBeat SF Green event) and is planning a $60K sedan. Tesla has sued Fisker, which Ray Lane (who was at SF Green) has called “ridiculous”. The Fisker founder helped design the Tesla. Fisker plans a counter-suit, according to Earth2Tech.

Electronic Arts continues to lose money — The world’s largest video game company, also know as EA, lost $94 million in the fourth quarter of last year as it spent a lot of money developing new titles. The loss was worse than Wall Street had been expecting, and significantly worse than the same time period last year, according to Bloomberg. EA is trying to take over game developer Take Two, and it could sure use the $500 million Take Two’s Grand Theft Auto IV made in its first week of sales.

Mayor wants electric cars for San Francisco — San Francisco’s mayor, Gavin Newsom, may want to help Project Better Place move to his city, according to Earth2Tech. Better Place is an electric car startup that wants to build recharging stations all over Israel and Denmark, and has $200 million towards that plan. We’ve covered the startup extensively (see the links), and would love to see it in SF. However, considering Newsom’s failure to even get extra solar subsidies passed — we’ve heard further rumors today that the measure will die — it seems highly unlikely that electric car charging stations will fly, unless the money is all private.

It’s not TV, it’s iTunes — and HBO is on it — Following up on yesterday’s rumors of HBO coming to Apple’s iTunes store, several shows were in fact launched today. These include The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex in the City and others.