I like renkoo and its ability to plan meetings with friend.

Its really nice and i like the renkoo logo also

Pankaj

I think in this niche space of online party planning, the truth is this: As awfully 1999 as Evite is, it just plain old works. It does the job very well and it’s very easy for the average person to understand and use. And last I saw, it was making a lot of money for its parent corporation, so it’s a real business to boot.

I think the end result of the Renkoo’s, Skobee’s, Planypus’s, and Socialzr’s is acquisition. Evite will buy one or more of these companies if their development expertise is worth it and their engineers and designers are worth hiring. And then Evite jumps from 1999 to 2007 quickly as a result of integration.

But it’s unlikely any of these companies individually is going to supplant Evite’s usage by the average American. Any website that’s fundamentally about offering a useful tool has to be able to be explained to my mother and my boyfriend in a few sentences or forget it.

But it’s very interesting to see this niche space getting so much work and attention devoted to it.

anyway good luck to all who wants to take on evite

I am not trashing the company as much as commenting on choice of technology. Comet is being hyped everywhere right now. I simply think it is not the right choice for the problem at hand. I was pointing out that the problem of making plans does not necessarily entail realtime chat. The fact that Renkoo used Comet probably stems from the fact that their ceo came from KnowNow where he actually built this technology first hand. I won’t deny that realtime push data is a cool concept. I am just arguing against its usefulness in making plans.

I am disappointed that many reviewers focus on technology hype over actual utility of the product. Only longterm use will show if a product is truly valuable, not the fact that it is buzzword compliant. That’s my two cents and I’m sticking to it

I know that if it was my company you trashed with your opinionated attitude, it would be that much more incentive to win the war that you seem to be declaring against Renkoo. If I were you, I’d get some class and focus on your own company which obviously needs all the help it can get, instead of trashing your competitors in public at every opportunity.

I know that I will never use your service after reading what you wrote.

We also offer calendar integration, sms notification, and an sms interface is coming soon. We come out with new features regularly, so stay tuned!

I don’t get why it was ’surprising’ that VC’s didn’t want to talk about technology. The comet technology is neither new nor that exciting, and at the end of the day who cares how you do it as long as you solve the problem. The problem is to build a sustainable business around helping people make plans. There are many strategies to do realtime chat including Ajax like we are, or even integrating with other products that have realtime chat.

In reality you’ll find in the long run once you get over the ‘playing with it’ stage, taht realtime chat is very seldom used to make plans. How often are 10 of your friends all online at the same time? We’ve been running planypus for 11 months now and very rarely are even two or three people on an event at the same time to chat. Usually they just leave comments that others can see later.

So by focusing on this very small aspect of planning, I think renkoo painted themselves into a corner because now they’ve got this technology that has problems with firewalls and poor browser support, and what is it all for? To impress a reviewer the first time he tries the app? Imho, it was a bad choice and one that caused them to have a really long time to market.

We started developing Planypus about the same time as Renkoo, yet we launched our product with no funding, a team half the size (and part time to boot!), and a month earlier than them. Was comet worth it?