February 18, 2007
Party pieces
For all the socialising involved in social networking, there are not too many Web 2.0 sites out there catering for real-world parties.
MyPunchbowl.com, launched this month, aims to provide an end-to-end solution, as it were, for an eight-year-old’s birthday party at the zoo, or any other social event needing organisation.
Matt Douglas, founder of MyPunchbowl, told us he got the idea from partying a lot himself and struggling to get all the bits together from invites to food to mariachi bands.
The site takes organisers through the whole process from initial emailed invitations to locating supplies and entertainment and posting photos after the event.
It is something of a mash-up of maps, contact management and hooks into photo sites such as Flickr, put together by a team of four in Boston.
Information is understandably sparse at present - partnerships are needed to fill out its limited database of party venues - but MyPunchbowl is potentially the most comprehensive of the party sites.
Evite, owned by Interactive Corporation. is the big player in invites, while Yahoo acquired Upcoming.org in 2005 in the early days of Web 2.0 to provide user-generated event info. Renkoo uses a number of Web 2.0 tools to enable friends to organise get-togethers and collaborate on times and venues.
This is typical of traits such as the ‘long tail’ effect within social networking - generic sites are fast becoming replaced by niche operators that can provide a far more useful service than any of the media giants out there. You may be interested in my start-up, WeHangHere.com, that is a google maps mash-up linking members profiles to their favourite hang-outs, which they can add themselves along with upcoming event information and reviews. With venues in over 29 cities, it is a global site for a local audience - linking online social networking to the very ‘real-world’ need to make friends down the pub..
Posted by: Lindsay Middleton | February 19th, 2007 at 7:58 pm | Report this commentI can see ‘real world’ niche sites becoming ever more useful for managing real life events, such as parties, meet-ups, groups and clubs. Members of our UK social and community networking site, My Neighbourhoods (myneighbourhoods.co.uk), are doing just that, as well as getting to know their neighbours and local area in the process.
Posted by: Danny Bull | April 9th, 2007 at 7:10 pm | Report this comment