renkoo

We've written about party planning tool MyPunchbowl several times before including their relaunch last November. I had a chance to speak with Matt about two announcements the company is making today. The announcements are: a new partnership with 1-800-Flowers on a new site called Celebrations and "Share on Facebook" functionality. Check out the details on both on the Mypunchbowl blog.

MyPunchbowl is creating an end-to-end party planning tool rather than just an invite service such as eVite. He went on to say that their tool "helps the host look good". They are working on finishing the complete loop for party planning. It'd be great to have a service that can not only help you schedule the party but make sure everything you need is ready including location advice and rentals where needed.

Competitors to MyPunchbowl include Socializr and Renkoo (our Renkoo coverage). Matt notes that MyPunchbowl is much larger than both competitors using analytics charts from Compete (Compete is down so I can't embed a chart unfortunately).

The team is located in Boston and has 4 full-time employees and 5 contractors. All development is done inhouse.

What service do you use for event planning? My sister uses evite for everything, I haven't had many events to plan.

After Kristen posted today on a suggested mashup, I thought it would be interesting to look at 5 great acquisition targets for 1st quarter 2007. I do not have financials for any of these companies, so I am working from a base of technology and visability. For each company I list, I have also listed a possible buyer along with my commentary on why the purchase makes sense. Do you agree or disagree?

Renkoo (review, interview) added profiles to their social networking site today. Instead of a boring, same old profile, this profile actually builds over time by having your friends answer questions about you.

From their blog entry, "We’re all about depth of friendship, not just breadth of friendship. With that in mind, we created Renkoo Profiles, which every week let you answer a new question, and offers your friends the opportunity to answer a new question about you."

Check out Renkoo founder Adam Rifkin's profile. Based on the replies to his superhero question, I will not be calling on him the next time I get into a jam with Lex Luthor! Pete has more about Renkoo's competitors over at Mashable.

I completed a video review of Renkoo last week. It is a tool that helps you to plan meetups where you don't already know where or when. It is a bit different than eVite and really has a great interface and it is very Web 2.0/Ajax in its development. I gave Renkoo's CEO, Adam Rifkin, a call to discuss the background of the app, how they monetize the app and where the app is going. I also picked his brain about other business topics around Renkoo. Have a listen and learn something about this new cool planning tool.

One of my predictions for 2007 is that people will decrease their overall online time by 10%. Renkoo is a tool that helps you plan events with your friends and family. Similar to evite, just much simpler, classier, and the design and usability is a step up from evite. I like Renkoo and think this app is on to bright future. I like the fact that you can send the invites to your friends via email, sms, or instant message. And that it let's you know when one of the invites didn't make it to your friend.