Catherina Fake, who co-founded Flickr & Hunch is back with her new startup – Pinwheel. In a blog post, Fake revealed several details of her new project which has managed to raise over $2 million in funding even before its launch.
According to Fake,
“Pinwheel is a way to find and leave notes all over the world… A note, like a photo, can be a container for all kinds of things. It is the perfect social object.”
That sounds nice for sure for many people, but for me it sounds like an echo. I remember hearing it somewhere else. Remember Repudo? Here is how Repudo works-
Repudo is a platform to handle digital objects in the real world. With Repudo, you can drop all kinds of multimedia such as photos, text, video and audio messages at any location.
Ouch! Digital objects turn into notes and that’s it. The concept still remains the same. Both Repudo and Pinwheel are location based with multimedia thrown in to the mix.
Repudo has been designed to make it look like a social-game. From their FAQ page,
With Repudo you are able to pick up & drop messages with your smartphone. To drop or pick up a Repudo you have to get out on the street. For example; drop a video, audio or text message for a friend at the central station. He or she has to go there in person to pick it up and get the message with their smartphone.
Now this isn’t too different from how Pinwheel seems to work. Below is an example shared by Fake of a note she wrote for her friend Lauren
What more? Fake is planning to add features like categorization & push notifications to Pinwheel which are already present in Repudo. Even the proposed monetization techniques are similar. Fake says that the businesses will be able to create their own sponsored notes at given places. Repudo too works on a similar model which they call ‘Specials‘.
To be fair, I haven’t personally used Pinwheel as it is still in private beta and all the information I have is courtesy Fake’s blog post. Repudo has been around for a few months now and hasn’t really managed to kick off as much as they would have hoped. No wonder Pinwheel has managed to avoid any comparison till now. But not anymore.