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"Verizon is showing an active interest in mobile commerce and location-based applications via its investment arm, Verizon Ventures. Wednesday, the group announced that it had participated in Geodelic's recent $7 million Series B round. This follows a similar $400,000 investment in CardStar's mobile loyalty management platform.\nGeodelic positions itself as a location-based mobile platform for brands and consumers. The startup has consumer-facing iPhone and Android applications that offer visual, location-based place search powered by its own relevance engine. \nThe Geodelic mobile application is a slight reinterpretation on ideas already present in the likes of Where and Around Me, so users can browse nearby surroundings and flip through places in a carousel-like fashion, view venues on a map or check out a list view instead. Places are also categorized by type \u2014 think movies, bars and nightclubs, banks, coffee shops, etc. \u2014 with top navigation icons offering users a browse-by-type experience. The application also incorporates checkins for its own stab at consumer loyalty. \nThe service's most interesting feature is the newly lauched GeoGuides. Application users can activate GeoGuides to add additional layers of context to their visual place searches. The LAX Airport guide, for instance, will include more detailed information on airport surroundings. The GeoGuides feature is also marketed at brands and advertisers looking to distribute their own place-centric branded guides.\nTo date, Geodelic has raised roughly $10.5 million in Series A and B rounds. Verizon Ventures's participation was in the latter round. The exact amount of the investment is unknown, but Verizon's heightened interest in the mobile location space is certainly something to watch.\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2010/09/23/geodelic/>