For the past several weeks, there have been quite a few whispers around the web about a new service called Burbn. Besides having a great name, the service is apparently in a very hot space right now: location-based services. I say “apparently,” because the service is still very much a stealth project. But it’s not so stealth that they can’t get a seed round of funding.

Burbn has just closed a $500,000 seed round, we’re hearing. According to sources, both Baseline Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz participated in the round. From what we can tell, right now, Burbn is just a one-man shop: Kevin Systrom, a former Googler. With the funding, you can probably expect that to change soon.

So aside from potentially being the location space, what is Burbn? Well, the current splash page where you can sign up to get for information, tells us a little bit more: “Burbn is a new way to communicate + share in the real world.” While that may sound like Google Buzz or a handful of other services, the key to that is “in the real world,” again, this reeks of location.

We’ve also heard that the site currently being tested is a mobile web app that uses HTML5 to work in both iPhone and Android browsers. Monitor their Twitter feed for more.

Crunchbase

• INSTAGRAM

Company: Instagram

Website: instagr.am

Launch Date: September 20, 2011

Funding: $7.5M

Instagram is a photo sharing application for the iPhone. It allows you to quickly take pictures, apply a filter, and share it on the service or with a number of other services. The team behind it is also behind Burbn, a location-based service that works with HTML5-compatible web browsers.

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