Flook closes $1 million seed round

With secured funding, Ambient Ventures brings series of updates to location discovery iPhone app

Flook, a location browsing app for the iPhone that we first profiled a couple weeks ago, has extended and closed its seed round of funding to $1 million. Amadeus Capital Partners and Eden Ventures both contributed to the round.

Popularly described as a kind of StumbleUpon for location discovery, Flook lets users swipe across the screen to scroll through various cards detailing the location and character of various businesses in one's area. With the startup's announcement of new funding comes also a series of substantial updates to the app.

The two biggest updates are the app's new integration with Twitter and Flickr. Twitter users can now tweet Flook cards from their phone or the Web, sending out the location's description to all one's followers. We should expect Facebook integration of the same sort to be introduced shortly.

As for Flickr, the staff behind Flook has hand-selected a group of core Flook users spreading great content. Using the new feature, these users can automatically create a Flook card from Flickr by tagging a geo-located photograph with a unique Flook tag, like flookfunny for a funny card.

In terms of basic usability, Flook has added some essential features, like the ability to collect cards and follow creators of cards via the application's Web interface. Additionally, because the app is growing communities internationally in places like Taiwan, India, China and Australia, translation tools are constantly being upgraded.

Finally, Flook has introduced a set of APIs for developers to build upon and expand the application but, for now, they are still in closed beta.

This is just the beginning of Flook's growth, so we'll be keeping a close eye on their evolution.