Because we liked the way the Panoramio layer is displayed, we did the same for YouTube videos. Now you can already see a still from the video on the map. This makes it easier to find that video that you are looking for. We hope you enjoy exploring the world through IRL Connect and tip us if you find a layer that you think needs to be added!

The TechCrunch Awards aka The Europas are just around the corner and IRL Connect is nominated for the Best Design award. Today TechCrunch announced the shortlist and we are still in the race! On July the 9th we’ll find out if we have the best design in Europe. Stay tuned…

We hear a lot about the future of social networking these days. As we travel around the world to conferences, read online reports and the social media news stream, we hear about the new frontier, proximity based advertising, location based services and their role in our social networking environment.  More importantly, these services are opening up our social networks to the wider Web. So what does the new social networking frontier look like? No one really knows, but there are some great thinkers out there that we follow like Joseph Pine II and Jerimiah Owyang who we believe are addressing the shifts in the social web and will lead us out of our old social networking ways.

IRL Connect is about the creation of a true visual social network based on location and communities.  We believe that the new social networking frontier is about removing  communication silos and breaking down the anonymity and walls that surround the way we connect to each other. Web social networks and mobile social networks have struggled to unlock the value of location. Although progress has been made on this, the big revolution in social networking has not happened  and the current social web remains a walled garden with popular social networking sites more closed than ever.

Forrester Research analyst Jeremiah Owyang has spoken about the future of social networking and referenced the next five eras for the Social Web:  social relationships, social functionality, social colonization, social context and social commerce. Jeremiah talked about where it’s all headed and mentions IRL Connect as an example of a social site that’s ahead of the curve in this area. He stated that the market is now in the stage of social relationships and IRL Connect and others are venturing into the area of social colonization and social context.

The new frontier is about social community and context, the creation of the Mirror World that Joe Pine II talks about in his yet to be published book Infinite Possibility.  It’s about all your friends and your geo content – everywhere. It’s about creating a centralized platform for LBS on the Web where you take all your friends, content, mobile photos, videos and live broadcast and put it on the map and interact with it. IRL Connect is the first visual social network to take all the content that has been mapped and adds a social layer to it.

This week in a ReadWriteWeb article on the changes of MySpace, the writer Marshall Kirkpatrick said “Facebook can’t rule the world for ever. No one can.”  We think that social networking should enable the user to share photos, videos and content from any social network. We see an open playground that allows users to interact and collaborate in real time and in real life.  This is the mirror world of location based services that we are building at IRL Connect and we hope that you will join us in creating this future.

Unlike other API’s IRL Connect will make the collected mobile data that is being pushed to their platform part of the API again which enables application developers to use that data to enrich their services.

Our goal is to create an open social ecosystem that allows location-based content and users to be easily shared. All the data that we put on the map and the collected data from 3rd party applications will be available through the API again, so that everyone can use that data to build the best possible user experience around it.

With mobile services like the live video broadcasting application Bambuser and the photo and video sharing application Mobypicture already using the API, IRL Connect is making significant steps forward to becoming a centralized platform for location. The IRL Connect API provides mobile services with a platform to extend their service to the Web. It gives mobile users a Web experience that is missing from the mobile. Mobile developers can now pull out status messages and users by radius, including Twitter and Facebook and push content like photos, videos to and from their platform.

Developers can apply for the IRL Connect API key at http://api.irlconnect.com.

One of our users pointed out to us that we are ranking number 5 in the Twitdom popular apps list. Since we want to be number 1, we ask all of you that like our service to vote for us and make that happen. Just go to our Twitdom page and vote 5 stars.

Twitdom is a website that has collects information about and ranks Twitter applications. With  over 883+ apps in their database maintained by Twitter users the website is  doing a great job in providing a platform where you can find new cool Twitter apps.

Have a look at the IRL Connect Team and Advisory Board Members URL’s:

http://frankschuil.irlconnect.com/

http://felixdulfer.irlconnect.com/

http://marco.irlconnect.com/

http://jennalee.irlconnect.com/

http://jwijgerd.irlconnect.com/

http://tinab.irlconnect.com/

On Wednesday June 10th at 17:00 our CEO Frank Schuil will be talking about the future of LBS during the Navigation & LBS conference at the Amsterdam Marriott.

In his presentation Looking towards the Web and Location based services moving forward he will focus on the importance of seeing the mobile as an extension of the Web and vice versa and elaborate on the emerging markets that will have an impact on how they evolve.

If you would like to meet with IRL Connect please contact us.

Last week in Ghent at the Benelux Venture 50 we presented IRL Connect to a jury of VCs from around Europe. We are proud to report that we were one of ten selected as one of the most promising start ups out of 50 companies. This means we move onto the next round held at the Eurecan European Venture Contest in October in Barcelona.