VentureBeat

Social networks built around location are a hot item, and getting hotter.

It’s one thing to have a group of contacts which you can update with words from a mobile device (think the micro-messaging service Twitter). It’s another to be able to quickly update your exact location on a map and have others see it. Add to that the ability to review places (think: Yelp) as well as tag places you would like to go, and you have a general idea of Whrrl, a location-based social network.

Several other services including BrightKite and Yahoo’s FireEagle, are exploring similar usage of location for networks, but with this new round of funding, Whrrl gets an important ally: T-Mobile. Deutsche Telekom’s venture capital arm, T-Mobile Venture Fund led this latest Series B round.

T-Mobile’s support validates the service, said Jeff Holden, chief executive and co-founder of Pelago, Whrrl’s parent. T-Mobile and Indian venture fund Reliance Technology Ventures (RTVL), which also participated in the round, will be important in helping the service expand globally, Holden said.

This location-based network arena will only get hotter as newer technologies and newer phones come into the market. While Google’s Android is still a little ways off, Apple’s 3G iPhone is expected to be just around the corner, and is expected to add GPS technology. Whrrl has already spoken on its blog about its excitement about building a native application for the device with the software development kit (SDK).

Pelago was 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. Kleiner Perkins participated in both Pelago’s Series A round as well as this latest round. Other return investors include Trilogy Equity Partners and Bezos Expeditions. DAG Ventures is a new investor.

Loopt is yet another company doing something similar to whrrl, using GPS to update your friends’ location on a map. Loopt is backed by Kleiner rival, Sequoia.

As more and more phones add GPS capabilities, the ability to update Whrrl will get easier and easier. In fact, a user could use the service to send out updates of their location to friends without having to touch the device.

The Seattle, WA-based Pelago previously raised $7.4 million in 2006. We wrote about Whrrl in November.

Mobile social gaming startup Frengo launched last month, offering a bunch of games that you play via SMS or the Web on your mobile phone.

It offers fantasy sports leagues such as Fantasy Football, betting games about winners of sporting events like “College Hoops Pick ‘Em”, and posting of comments and pictures to MySpace — so there’s something for anyone who is bored and looking for distraction for free. We signed up, and it was easy enough to get started (you don’t need to download anything), though we didn’t find the format particularly compelling.

The company was originally backed in December with $2.3 million from Index Ventures and Khosla Ventures. It has just raised another round of $5.7 million, led by secretive firm, Trilogy Equity Partners (no web site), which is run by John Stanton and Mikal Thomsen, co-founders of Western Wireless. Also participating were Index and Khosla, according to Techcrunch.

For two years, Google has brutalized its competition and other start-ups by grabbing the best talent with two sexy pieces of bait: the stock option, and its fun brand.

However, the first piece of bait, the stock option, has become decidely less sexy — and we may soon see more employees start to leave for more lucrative job opportunities.

Google has recognized this, creating an unusual options trading scheme it hopes will retain employees.

While Google’s stock price defied gravity through January this year — there are strong signs it may stall going forward (see graph below). It means that an employee hired a couple of weeks ago got their options at a price of $500, but now see the stocks valued at $481. If there’s little hope the stock will rise much, what’s the point of staying (aside from the apparently fun work atmosphere, which may be enough for many people, granted)?

That conundrum may be why Google has just introduced the options market, an online trading site that lets Googlers sell their shares to institutional investors — who are often willing to pay more than the current market price for an option to buy those shares in the future. The Merc’s Elise Ackerman has a good summary of the program here. For example, a Googler with options at $500 may think their shares are essentially worthless right now. However, traders on the futures market are offering to buy those options in January 2008 for a price of $500 a share — but not only that, they’re willing to pay $70 right now for the privilege — basically netting the employee $70 per share. Not bad if you’ve got an award of 1,000 or so shares.

The idea is to give employees some confidence that their shares are worth something, and motivate them, according to Dave Sobota, Google’s counsel.

However, “it its just as likely that it will encourage them to sell,” counters Nell Minow, co-founder of the Corporate Library, a governance advisory firm. After all, the average employee has 700 shares, and the resulting $49,000 net does not a fortune make.

A trickle of employees have left Google so far, but mostly those early employees who made bucketloads. We’ve yet to see a wave of employees successfully poached by other companies. When Googlers leave, it’s usually to do their own thing. That may be changing soon. (Image above of lavalamps is from Google’s job page).

Check out the fresh $100,000+ jobs at the VentureBeat JobBoard.

Here are some of the listings just posted:

–Diversion Media is looking for a product developer;
–Wellsphere is a stealth San Francisco start-up that says it is developing a community-based Internet application to help people lead healthy, happier lives. It is looking for a Web developer;
–Starting today, for a limited time, we’re offering a 30 percent discount on the normal posting price. When you post a job listing, scroll down to where it says “coupon” and write in the code: HOLIDAY30.

If your New Year’s resolution will be to make more money, it’s not too late to apply to some of the fresh $100,000+ jobs at the VentureBeat JobBoard.

We’re getting feedback that JobBoard is working better than other boards (see comment). Here are some of the job listings just posted:

–Perenety, a start-up that is about to relaunch, is looking for a software engineer;
–Sling Media is looking for a director of worldwide customer and technical support;
–Kosmix, the search company run by the guys who went to school with the Google guys, are looking for an interaction/visual designer;
–Yelp, the online local review company, is looking for a senior system administrator;
–Spokeo, the new company we wrote about integrating MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and others, is looking for two Ruby developers;
–Jigsaw, the start-up that says it is giving Hoover’s a run for its money, is hiring Web developers, software engineers, senior product managers and more.

Since launching our $100,000 plus VentureBeat JobBoard, the job market continues to get tighter. Silicon Valley has a 4.1 percent unemployment rate, the lowest since the boom. Employers are having a tough time finding qualified applicants, so we’re trying to help.

Here are some of the latest job listings, just in time for some Thanksgiving resume-writing:

–Bing, a stealth Palo Alto start-up run by industry veteran Eric Hahn, looks for ace software developer. (This is a company no one has reported on before.)
–Tabula, a Santa Clara start-up, is hiring aggressively, also wants some software developers, but also a design architect and a circuit designer.
–First Round Capital, the seed venture capital firm run by Josh Kopelman and Rob Hayes, is looking for a venture analyst.
–Energy Innovations, the solar technology company that just signed a deal with Google to introduce the nation’s largest commercial installment, is looking for sales and marketing people.
–Ad network company AdMob is looking for a software engineer; Amazon’s search start-up, A9.com, is looking for a product manager; and SearchForce is looking for a software engineer.

Medio, a Seattle start-up that gives you search results tailored for your mobile phone, has raised $30 million in a second round of funding to keep up with the mobile search Jones’.

Founder Brian Lent worked side-by-side with the Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. So like the guys at Kosmix, who were close with the Google guys, Lent may feel he has some self-redemption to do. Lent reportedly also turned down the No. 1 employee position at Yahoo, as reported by the SeattlePI’s John Cook last year.

Medio finds itself in the middle of competitive but growing market: More people are using mobile phones to search for information. Google, Yahoo and Ask have all released upgrades to their mobile search offerings, but they are stuck trying to offer the same results they offer to your desktop. Medio, along with Jumptap and 4Info are tailoring search especially for your phone.

John Cook summed up what these guys are trying to do in his story about Medio:

Medio’s predictive analytics technology allows people to receive relevant search results on their mobile phones. That’s critical because consumers usually want very specific information in a mobile environment — the closest Starbucks, the Usher ring tone or the departure time for United Flight 386.

4Info is different, because it relies on texting — a user texts 4Info with search queries, and 4info sends back results. Jumptap and Medio offer you a search bar on your phone (visual below). And since Jumptap raised $22 million last month, of course Medio had to follow suit with even more.

The funding comes from Accel Partners, and returning investors Mohr Davidow Ventures, Frazier Technology Ventures and Trilogy Equity Partners.

Medio is in a race with Jumptap to sign deals with carriers — to earn the coveted spot as default search engine their phones. Both companies are developing advertising platforms to go with their search.

Medio recently poached Omar Tawakol from Revenue Science — interestingly, another Mohr Davidow portfolio company — to be its chief advertising officer, SeattlePI’s Cook reported recently.

Verizon and Vodafone are using Medio (WSJ sub required) for their search offerings.

Since launching our $100,000 plus VentureBeat JobBoard, entrepreneurs continue to tell us they’re getting highly qualified applicants via VentureBeat. We’re glad it’s working. We’ll try to bolster this shortly by promoting the JobBoard even more.

Here are some of the more recent job listings:

–Software engineers wanted at Palo Alto news site Topix (a company we wrote about here);
–Product marketer wanted a San Mateo-based network security company, Metavize;
–An Entrepreneur in Residence at National ICT Australia (NICTA), which is Australia’s ICT Research Centre of Excellence. They’re trying to raise their profile, and are apparently paying well to do it.

We’ve just launched the VentureBeat JobBoard.

You might say, oh, yet another job board?!

The VentureBeat JobBoard is different because it is the only start-up oriented job board focused exclusively on high-end jobs — those paying $100,000 and up.

It’s relevant because the job market is the tightest it has been in years — and getting tighter. Good employees are hard to find. Employers continue to express frustration with general boards like Craigslist and Monster, because they get flooded with unqualified candidates.

You’ll find more than 100 jobs listed already, including openings at some of the valley’s stealth start-ups like Palo Alto’s Spock, to name just one.

There are listings at companies backed by the valley’s top venture capital firms. There are listings at venture firms themselves, including Sunil Paul’s new clean-tech effort.

The VentureBeat JobBoard focuses on the high-end jobs of its readers. VentureBeat readers are entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, veteran developers and architects, and other technology professionals.

That’s why it makes sense to limit this job board to the high-end. And companies willing to pay $200 will do this only for serious jobs.

The tech start-up sprit of Silicon Valley has gone global, and this job board will follow and serve the geographical constituency of its readers.

Finally, we’ll give good play to the job board on our homepage, via a widget that scrolls through the listings. See image here for example.

Update: We’ve just seen listing for a job less than $100,000, and we’re taking it down. Yes, we’ll be tracking this closely. If you apply for a job, and it turns out to be less than the threshhold, please let us know.