Social Concierge Startup Sosh Expands Into Its Third Market, Seattle

Residents of San Francisco and New York City have been lucky enough over the last year or so to have access to Sosh, a social concierge that helps users find fun and interesting things to do based on their location and interests. Well, those who live in the Emerald City can now also use the app.

After several weeks of beta testing, Sosh has expanded into Seattle, which is its third market. There, it will provide the same sort of activity and food and venue recommendations that it gives in its first two cities.

The whole thing works like this: Sosh trawls thousands of different data sources, including event websites, blogs, and the like, and then curates some of the top things to do in each of the cities it operates in.

There’s also a personalization element that kicks in for each user as they bounce around the app. It checks your social graph for common interests between your friends, and also learns what types of things you like, based on what you check out, favorite, or save. Afterward, it will serve you up more things like that.

The social aspect also enables users to easily share with their friends, on networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Seattle is just the first in a series of cities that Sosh plans to expand into over the next year. According to founder Rishi Mandal, Chicago and DC are next, followed soon after by Los Angeles and Boston. Or something like that.

“Over the next year, there should be no reason that Sosh won’t be in every city throughout the country,” Mandal told me.

Sosh will be leaning heavily on a whole bunch of new funding that the company roped in last August. It raised $10.1 million led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Battery Ventures. Altogether it’s raised more than $16 million.